Paper 2, Section II, J
Consider a random variable arising from the binomial distribution , . Find the maximum likelihood estimator and the Fisher information for .
Now consider the following priors on :
(i) a uniform prior on ,
(ii) a prior with density proportional to ,
(iii) a prior.
Find the means and modes of the posterior distributions corresponding to the prior distributions (i)-(iii). Which of these posterior decision rules coincide with ? Which one is minimax for quadratic risk? Justify your answers.
[You may use the following properties of the distribution. Its density , is proportional to , its mean is equal to , and its mode is equal to
provided either or .
You may further use the fact that a unique Bayes rule of constant risk is a unique minimax rule for that risk.]