Paper 2, Section I, H

Statistics
Part IB, 2013

State and prove the Rao-Blackwell theorem.

Individuals in a population are independently of three types {0,1,2}\{0,1,2\}, with unknown probabilities p0,p1,p2p_{0}, p_{1}, p_{2} where p0+p1+p2=1p_{0}+p_{1}+p_{2}=1. In a random sample of nn people the ii th person is found to be of type xi{0,1,2}x_{i} \in\{0,1,2\}.

Show that an unbiased estimator of θ=p0p1p2\theta=p_{0} p_{1} p_{2} is

θ^={1, if (x1,x2,x3)=(0,1,2)0, otherwise. \hat{\theta}= \begin{cases}1, & \text { if }\left(x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3}\right)=(0,1,2) \\ 0, & \text { otherwise. }\end{cases}

Suppose that nin_{i} of the individuals are of type ii. Find an unbiased estimator of θ\theta, say θ\theta^{*}, such that var(θ)<θ(1θ)\operatorname{var}\left(\theta^{*}\right)<\theta(1-\theta).