Let denote the join of measurable partitions recording the first observations, and set , with . The entropy of a countable measurable partition is , using natural logarithms and . Null atoms can be discarded. Throughout, is a probability measure.
The stronger property needed for monotonicity of normalized block entropy is that its increments decrease. Define
Since conditioning reduces entropy, . The conditional entropy chain rule and measure preservation give
It follows that , and consequently
This uses stationarity as well as the entropy chain rule; subadditivity alone would not establish monotonicity of every successive ratio.
The entropy rate of a measurable partition and the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy are, respectively,
One may equivalently take the supremum over countable finite-entropy measurable partitions.
The Shannon-McMillan-Breiman theorem states that for a countable measurable partition with , the normalized information
converges almost everywhere and in to a invariant function with integral . Here is the atom containing . If is an ergodic transformation, then almost everywhere. We prove the general form, including an explicit formula for its limit.
Let be the sigma-algebra generated by , let be trivial, and put . For every atom , the probabilities
form a bounded conditional-expectation martingale. The Martingale convergence theorem gives almost everywhere and in . Each of these probabilities is positive almost everywhere on : for example, integrating over the measurable set gives zero. Countability of lets us choose a common full-measure set for every atom.
The conditional information functions
therefore converge almost everywhere to . We need an integrable bound on this sequence; convergence of the probabilities alone would not supply one after taking logarithms. The allowed maximal inequality for conditional information functions gives, for ,
Combining this with the bound by and the tail integral formula for moments yields
Thus , and the dominated convergence theorem gives in . In particular,
because is the average of the decreasing sequence .
The information chain rule, applied from the final observation backwards, gives the exact identity
Indeed, the symbol at time is conditioned on times ; pulling that conditional probability back by gives . Measure preservation is sufficient for this pullback identity.
We now prove the required triangular ergodic averaging lemma in this instance. Put . Then almost everywhere, , and . Split the difference between the displayed triangular sum and . Terms whose index is at least are bounded by . The remaining terms are at most
After division by , each of these finitely many end terms tends to zero almost everywhere by the linear growth bound for integrable observables proved in Question 1. Applying the Birkhoff ergodic theorem to , for every fixed , therefore gives
These conditional expectations decrease to zero almost everywhere: they decrease, and their integrals tend to zero. Letting , then applying the Birkhoff ergodic theorem to , proves
For convergence, measure preservation gives the direct estimate
Combine this with convergence of the ergodic averages of . Finally, . In the ergodic case the invariant sigma-algebra is trivial, completing the familiar form of the theorem:
The Rudolph measure rigidity theorem has an essential ergodicity hypothesis. If a Borel probability measure on the circle group is invariant under both and , is ergodic for the semigroup generated jointly by these maps, and either map has positive Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, then
Equivalently, a jointly ergodic common invariant measure other than Lebesgue measure has zero entropy for both maps. Joint ergodicity means that every set invariant modulo under both maps has measure zero or one. Positive entropy without this hypothesis is insufficient: , with a Dirac measure, is a common invariant measure of positive entropy and is not .
The Host equidistribution theorem states that if are relatively prime integers and is invariant and ergodic under , with , then for -almost every the sequence is an equidistributed sequence for Lebesgue measure. Explicitly, for every continuous on the circle,
The non-ergodic form assumes invariance and positive entropy for almost every component in the ergodic decomposition . Applying the ergodic theorem of Host on each such component gives the same almost-everywhere conclusion for . More generally, its conclusion holds on the part supported on positive-entropy components. A positive value of alone does not eliminate zero-entropy components.
To deduce the joint version of the Rudolph measure rigidity theorem, suppose ; if only has positive entropy, interchange the roles. Write the ergodic decomposition as . Since commutes with , its pushforward measure sends a ergodic component to a ergodic component . On each component, is a factor of a measure-preserving system with fibres of size at most three. We use the standard entropy preservation under a finite-to-one factor:
The reason for this standard entropy fact is that, conditional on a complete factor point, every finite orbit name has at most three possibilities; its conditional entropy is bounded by , and division by the orbit length gives zero relative entropy.
The component at is almost everywhere; this follows from commutation and the componentwise ergodic averages. The component entropy function is therefore invariant under both and . Joint ergodicity makes it constant almost everywhere, and affinity of entropy under ergodic decomposition identifies the constant as . Thus almost every component has positive entropy, exactly the condition required in the non-ergodic Host equidistribution theorem. It follows that -almost every point equidistributes for under .
For any continuous , invariance under and the dominated convergence theorem now give
Continuous functions determine Borel probability measures on the circle, so , proving the deduction.
For the normal-number example, let be independent fair binary digits and define
This Cantor Bernoulli measure is supported on the middle-third Cantor set . If is the Bernoulli shift, then on the circle. Consequently is invariant and ergodic: a invariant event pulls back to an invariant event, which has probability zero or one.
Take the ternary digit measurable partition . Its block partition of length has, up to null endpoints, positive-measure atoms under , each of measure , and all other atoms have measure zero. Hence
Apply the Host equidistribution theorem with , . For -almost every , the sequence equidistributes for Lebesgue measure, so is a normal number in base by normality and equidistribution under integer multiplication.
The ternary expansion of -almost every such contains only and , so the frequency of digit is zero rather than . The ambiguous ternary endpoints form a countable null set and can be removed. Therefore is not a normal number in base . We have proved the stronger almost-everywhere existence statement
Let be the probability density function of the unknown and that of the noise, both relative to Lebesgue measure. By independence of random variables, the conditional distribution of the measurement given has density . Thus its likelihood function and the joint density are
The Bayesian model evidence is the marginal data density
Bayes theorem gives the posterior density solving this Bayesian inverse problem:
This formula applies when . Since by Tonelli theorem, these conditions hold almost everywhere under the marginal data law. Values of a conditional distribution at exceptional data are not determined by the joint law. The posterior mean or a maximum a posteriori estimate can then give a point estimate, while the full posterior density describes the remaining uncertainty.
Let be a multi-index with . The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives
The second integral is finite precisely under the sufficient inequality , which follows from . Hence is Lebesgue integrable for every .
The Fourier inversion theorem therefore defines a function
whose derivatives through order may be obtained by differentiating under the integral sign. Those derivatives are continuous, so . The inverse transform represents the same tempered distribution as ; consequently almost everywhere. This is the Sobolev embedding theorem in this range.
For an integrable function , the Lebesgue differentiation theorem states that
for almost everywhere . In particular,
at every Lebesgue point of .
Almost every is a Lebesgue point of . At such an , for ,
For , the same estimate over gives the identical limit. Therefore
at every Lebesgue point of , so is differentiable -almost everywhere. This is the differentiation of an indefinite Lebesgue integral.
Minimize subject to . A minimizing sequence is bounded in , and part 2 supplies a subsequence converging strongly in and weakly in . The constraint survives the strong convergence, while weak lower semicontinuity of the norm shows that the limit attains the minimum. Since and almost everywhere, we may take .
The Lagrange multiplier equation is
where testing with shows that . Thus
This is the ground-state eigenfunction of a confining Schrödinger operator.
The Lebesgue differentiation theorem states that if , then
for Lebesgue almost every . The Radon-Nikodym theorem states that if two sigma-finite measures satisfy , then there is a nonnegative measurable function , unique -almost everywhere, such that .
For any , take and let be a planar sector of angle . Every disc centred at the origin meets this sector in the proportion
so its measure density at is .
Apply the differentiation theorem to the indicator function . Its averages over balls are exactly , so the Lebesgue density theorem gives
almost everywhere. If , every numerator vanishes, so the density is zero wherever its denominator is nonzero. Conversely, if the density vanishes almost everywhere, the displayed identity gives almost everywhere, hence .
Finally suppose and are mutually absolutely continuous measures. Write . Then almost everywhere by the positive Radon-Nikodym derivative result. At almost every , the differentiation theorem applied to both and gives
Thus the -density also exists and belongs to at -almost every point.
For , the function is the th weak derivative when
for every test function . This is the integration by parts identity with no boundary term and agrees with the ordinary derivative whenever is classically differentiable.
For , the first-order Sobolev space is
with norm, for example,
Functions equal almost everywhere represent the same Sobolev element.
Let be the weak derivative and define
The fundamental theorem of calculus for Lebesgue integration makes an absolutely continuous function, differentiable almost everywhere, with almost everywhere. The distributional derivative of is zero. A locally integrable function with zero distributional derivative on a connected interval is equal almost everywhere to a constant . Consequently
is an absolutely continuous representative of , and almost everywhere.
Suppose and are weak solutions with the same trace, and put . The weak formulation permits itself as a test function, giving
Thus is almost everywhere constant, and its zero trace makes that constant zero. This proves uniqueness.
The weak identity also says that in the sense of distributions. The Weyl lemma therefore gives and pointwise. The assumed continuity on retains the prescribed boundary values, so the weak solution is the unique classical solution in .
Solve the adjoint transport equation
backward with terminal value zero. Along the characteristic flow map , the required solution is
Differentiation under the integral verifies the equation. If has compact support in , then vanishes for and for , so as required.
When the initial datum is zero, inserting this into the weak formulation gives
for every . Thus almost everywhere. The difference of two bounded weak solutions has zero initial datum, so this proves uniqueness.
For a probability measure-preserving system and a countable measurable partition of finite entropy, converges almost everywhere and in to an invariant function whose integral is . For an ergodic transformation, the limit is the constant . In general it is . The Martingale convergence theorem, maximal inequality for conditional information functions, and triangular ergodic averaging lemma prove this directly, without invertibility.