Paper 1, Section II, H
Part IB, 2011
Let be independent random variables with probability mass function , where is an unknown parameter.
(i) What does it mean to say that is a sufficient statistic for ? State, but do not prove, the factorisation criterion for sufficiency.
(ii) State and prove the Rao-Blackwell theorem.
Now consider the case where for non-negative integer and .
(iii) Find a one-dimensional sufficient statistic for .
(iv) Show that is an unbiased estimator of .
(v) Find another unbiased estimator which is a function of the sufficient statistic and that has smaller variance than . You may use the following fact without proof: has the Poisson distribution with parameter .