Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 ib Paper 1 19H c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Write , and . The joint probability density factors asBy the Fisher-Neyman factorization theorem, is a sufficient statistic. The same factorization shows that the smaller statistic is also a sufficient statistic. This gives the sufficient statistic for a symmetric uniform sample.
In fact, the likelihood-ratio criterion for minimal sufficiency identifies as a minimal sufficient statistic: two sample points with the same have identical likelihoods for all ; with different , their likelihoods have different parameter supports, and so are not proportional as functions of . Equivalently, the condition that for every and some positive constant holds exactly when their absolute maxima agree.
To see rigorously that cannot be recovered from almost surely, fix any . The sample has a distribution invariant under simultaneous sign reversal. If almost surely, the same identity would hold for the sign-reversed sample on another probability-one set. Since is unchanged by sign reversal, it would follow thatand hence almost surely. But this event has probability zero for a finite sample from a continuous uniform distribution: it entails for some pair of indices, including the possible case . Therefore is not a function of the sufficient statistic . The pair of extrema is not minimally sufficient, for every , even though it is sufficient.