Paper 2, Section I, H

Statistics
Part IB, 2015

Suppose that, given θ\theta, the random variable XX has P(X=k)=eθθk/k!\mathbb{P}(X=k)=e^{-\theta} \theta^{k} / k !, k=0,1,2,.k=0,1,2, \ldots . Suppose that the prior density of θ\theta is π(θ)=λeλθ,θ>0\pi(\theta)=\lambda e^{-\lambda \theta}, \theta>0, for some known λ(>0)\lambda(>0). Derive the posterior density π(θx)\pi(\theta \mid x) of θ\theta based on the observation X=xX=x.

For a given loss function L(θ,a)L(\theta, a), a statistician wants to calculate the value of aa that minimises the expected posterior loss

L(θ,a)π(θx)dθ\int L(\theta, a) \pi(\theta \mid x) d \theta

Suppose that x=0x=0. Find aa in terms of λ\lambda in the following cases:

(a) L(θ,a)=(θa)2L(\theta, a)=(\theta-a)^{2};

(b) L(θ,a)=θaL(\theta, a)=|\theta-a|.