The offspring probabilities for have expected value one. For one initial individual, the branching-process generating-function iteration givesFor the PGF disk is ; separately. Conditional on survival, the population is positive geometric with success probability , leading to the exponential limit of surviving geometric branching.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 ia Paper 2 9F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2010 ia Paper 2 11F a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 ia Paper 2 11F i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
For a Galton-Watson process, condition on the number of children of the initial individual. The descendants of these children over the next generations are independent copies of . The probability generating function of their total, conditional on , is . Averaging over the family-size law givesThis is the branching-process generating-function iteration. Conditioning instead on the last generation gives ; both orders agree because is the th iterate of the same function . The argument holds on the usual PGF domain , with larger domains available when the corresponding expectations converge.