Chapter 4
Past examination paper
What follows is the University of Zambia’s MAT3601 Mathematical Statistics final examination of 2013, worked in full. Six questions were set and candidates answered any five, in three hours — so a little over half an hour a question, which is worth knowing before you start.
Read each question, put the notes away, and write your own answer before opening the solution. A worked paper read passively teaches almost nothing; the same paper attempted first is the best preparation there is.
Note 4.0.1. One misprint is carried over from the original and corrected where it occurs: in Question 3(c) the stated support \(x=0,1,2,\ldots \) makes the probabilities sum to \(\frac {1}{1-\theta }\) rather than \(1\). The intended support is \(x=1,2,3,\ldots \)