Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/ii/paper-4/22j/b/solution

Weak convergence means that for every bounded continuous real function on ; it is a statement about their distributions, not their coupling.
The central limit theorem says that for independent identically distributed real variables of finite mean and variance , . For this is equivalent to convergence of to the standard normal distribution. For , every variable equals almost surely and the limit is the point mass at zero.
For the proof when , put . Its characteristic function has expansion . To justify this using only a second moment, subtract the first two Taylor terms of and use dominated convergence theorem, with the second-order remainder bounded by a constant times . Independence gives the characteristic function of the normalized sum as . The Lévy continuity theorem says that pointwise convergence of characteristic functions to a characteristic function continuous at zero implies weak convergence. Since is the characteristic function of , the result follows.

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