Paper 1, Section II, J
The distribution of a random variable is obtained from the binomial distribution by conditioning on ; here is an unknown probability parameter and is known. Show that the distributions of form an exponential family and identify the natural sufficient statistic , natural parameter , and cumulant function . Using general properties of the cumulant function, compute the mean and variance of when . Write down an equation for the maximum likelihood estimate of and explain why, when , the distribution of is approximately normal for large .
Suppose we observe . It is suggested that, since the condition is then automatically satisfied, general principles of inference require that the inference to be drawn should be the same as if the distribution of had been and we had observed . Comment briefly on this suggestion.