Paper 1, Section II,
Part II, 2017
For a positive integer , we want to estimate the parameter in the binomial statistical model , based on an observation .
(a) Compute the maximum likelihood estimator for . Show that the posterior distribution for under a uniform prior on is , and specify and . [The p.d.f. of is given by
(b) (i) For a risk function , define the risk of an estimator of , and the Bayes risk under a prior for .
(ii) Under the loss function
find a Bayes optimal estimator for the uniform prior. Give its risk as a function of .
(iii) Give a minimax optimal estimator for the loss function given above. Justify your answer.