Suppose that $X_{1}, X_{2}, \ldots, X_{n_{1}}, Y_{1}, Y_{2}, \ldots, Y_{n_{1}},$ and $W_{1}, W_{2}, \ldots, W_{n_{1}}$ are independent random samples from normal distributions with respective unknown means $\mu_{1}, \mu_{2},$ and $\mu_{3}$ and common variances $\sigma_{1}^{2}=\sigma_{2}^{2}=\sigma_{3}^{2}=\sigma^{2} .$ Suppose that we want to estimate a linear function of the means:
a. What is the standard error of the estimator $\hat{\theta}$ ?
b. What is the distribution of the estimator $\hat{\theta}$ ?
c. If the sample variances are given by $S_{1}^{2}, S_{2}^{2},$ and $S_{3}^{2},$ respectively, consider
$$S_{p}^{2}=\frac{\left(n_{1}-1\right) S_{1}^{2}+\left(n_{2}-1\right) S_{2}^{2}+\left(n_{3}-1\right) S_{3}^{2}}{n_{1}+n_{2}+n_{3}-3}$$
i. What is the distribution of $\left(n_{1}+n_{2}+n_{3}-3\right) S_{p}^{2} / \sigma^{2} ?$
ii. What is the distribution of
$$T=\frac{\hat{\theta}-\theta}{S_{p} \sqrt{\frac{a_{1}^{2}}{n_{1}}+\frac{a_{2}^{2}}{n_{2}}+\frac{a_{3}^{2}}{n_{3}}} ?} ?$$
d. Give a confidence interval for $\theta$ with confidence coefficient $1-\alpha$
e. Develop a test for $H_{0}: \theta=\theta_{0}$ versus $H_{a}: \theta \neq \theta_{0}$
$\theta=a_{1} \mu_{1}+a_{2} \mu_{2}+a_{3} \mu_{3}$. Because the maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE) of a function of parameters is the function of the MLEs of the parameters, the MLE of $\theta$ is $\hat{\theta}=a_{1} X+a_{2} Y+a_{3} W$