Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-probability-measure-and-martingales-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/2/c/ii/solution

Use the nonnegative martingale and filtration established above. Fix a finite and let
For , is the union of the threshold-crossing events up to , so is a bounded stopping time. The optional stopping theorem for a martingale at a bounded stopping time gives . On one has ; on its complement one still has . Therefore
Only a bounded stopping time has been used, so no extra uniform integrability assumption at an unbounded hitting time is implicit. This is also the Doob maximal inequality for a nonnegative submartingale specialized to a mean-one martingale.

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