Paper 2, Section II, J
In a general decision problem, define the concepts of a Bayes rule and of admissibility. Show that a unique Bayes rule is admissible.
Consider i.i.d. observations from a , model. Can the maximum likelihood estimator of be a Bayes rule for estimating in quadratic risk for any prior distribution on that has a continuous probability density on Justify your answer.
Now model the as i.i.d. copies of , where is drawn from a prior that is a Gamma distribution with parameters and (given below). Show that the posterior distribution of is a Gamma distribution and find its parameters. Find the Bayes rule for estimating in quadratic risk for this prior. [The Gamma probability density function with parameters is given by
where is the usual Gamma function.]
Finally assume that the have actually been generated from a fixed Poisson distribution, where . Show that converges to zero in probability and deduce the asymptotic distribution of under the joint law of the random variables . [You may use standard results from lectures without proof provided they are clearly stated.]