For an aperiodic positive Harris recurrent Markov chain with geometric ergodicity, an observable with stationary moment for some satisfies a central limit theorem. Its asymptotic variance is , with stationary covariances. Ergodicity alone does not guarantee this theorem.
Certain ruin with nonpositive loading and finite claim variance Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
For positive claims with finite variance and , the classical risk model has ruin probability one from any finite capital. At claim times, surplus increments are independent copies of with mean . Negative mean sends their partial sums to minus infinity by the strong law of large numbers. At zero mean, the increments have finite nonzero variance. For every fixed , the central limit theorem gives limiting probability of a partial sum below . The probability of unboundedness below is therefore at least ; as a tail event it has probability zero or one by the Kolmogorov zero-one law, and hence one.
Exponential-rate maximum-likelihood estimator Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
For independent observations from the exponential distribution with rate , the log-likelihood is , so
The central limit theorem and delta method give
With absolutely summable autocovariance, the asymptotic variance of the sample mean satisfies
The sum is signed, rather than a sum of absolute values. It can be zero: the first difference of strong white noise has telescoping partial sums. A central limit theorem needs further dependence assumptions.
Normal approximation 2026-10-05
A normal approximation replaces a sampling distribution by a normal distribution, often through a central limit theorem. In a Wald test, approximate statistical power is determined by the standardized difference under the alternative. This yields Neyman allocation for fixed treatment-specific variances.