Let . Since ,
Permuting preserves their joint probability distribution and leaves every generator of unchanged. Therefore, for each bounded -measurable ,
This is the symmetry of exchangeable random variables. By the defining identity of conditional expectation, all are equal almost surely. Summing these conditional expectations and using that is -measurable gives
Hence the conditional expectation of a summand given future partial sums is
The integrability of each justifies every conditional expectation above.
Use the standard definition of a local martingale, including an integrable initial value, and let be a localizing sequence. If , the Fatou lemma gives . For , the Conditional Fatou lemma gives
For clarity, the Conditional Fatou lemma itself follows by setting for nonnegative , applying the conditional version of the monotone convergence theorem to , and observing . Hence a nonnegative local martingale is a supermartingale.
If simultaneously for all , with a deterministic , the dominated convergence theorem applied to the stopped martingale identity gives, for each ,
This is exactly the conditional expectation identity, so a bounded local martingale is a true martingale. The same proof works for deterministic bounds on every finite time interval; merely having a finite random pathwise bound supplies no dominating integrable random variable and is a different convention.
For the exponential distribution with mean , and . Therefore
Since ties have probability zero, . Taking expected values in the definition of gives
There is also an imputation interpretation. If A is observed first, ; if B censors A, memorylessness of the exponential distribution and independence imply that the remaining mean lifetime is . Thus is the conditional expectation of given the observed minimum and censoring indicator. The tower property of conditional expectation gives the same equality. This does not say that and have the same distribution.
Take an increasing localizing sequence for and define the stopping times
The predictable process condition makes a stopping time. For each fixed finite time range, the finitely many coefficients are finite almost surely; hence almost surely.
The stopped martingale transform can be written
Its coefficient is -measurable and bounded in absolute value by . Each summand is consequently integrable with zero conditional expectation given , since is a true martingale. Thus is a true martingale and
The original PDF fixes ; the TeX extraction omits this equality.
Use the slotted ALOHA model with one outstanding packet per active station and a collision channel: a slot with exactly one attempt succeeds, whereas an idle slot or a slot with two or more attempts delivers nothing. Let be independent Poisson random variables of mean , independent also of the transmission choices. Arrivals join after the current slot's attempts. Given , the attempt count has a binomial distribution with parameters and . Consequently, for ,
For , set and . The equation adds arrivals and removes precisely one packet following a successful slot. The estimate controls the common transmission probability and updates using the idle, success, or collision feedback. The conditional distribution of the next state depends only on , so this pair is a Markov chain.
Away from the reflecting floor in , its one-step conditional expectations are
When and are large with , the Poisson limit theorem gives and . Treating these approximate drifts as derivatives motivates the fluid approximation of slotted ALOHA:
The floor at is negligible in this interior scaling. This calculation motivates the ordinary differential equations; it is not a proof of a stochastic fluid limit.
For , put
Then and . On the domain , introduce time by . Differentiating gives
where .
The function is strictly increasing from zero to infinity, and . To check the monotonicity explicitly,
Indeed, with ,
because its discriminant is ; and . Thus the scalar ordinary differential equation for points toward the unique value satisfying . Every trajectory with , has bounded and . Positivity of follows from .
If , then and . Thus decays exponentially for large , and
This is finite-time draining of a fluid model. The unmodified equations have undefined at the origin, so the statement that trajectories converge to the origin needs this endpoint interpretation; continuing with an absorbing zero trajectory is an additional fluid-model convention, not a solution of the displayed equations at the origin.
If , then and . Now grows exponentially, physical time tends to infinity, and
In particular the trajectory escapes to infinity. Even without the ratio analysis, , since .
For the actual Markov chain, it is essential not to replace the finite- success probability by : a single backlogged packet can succeed with probability one. Instead, for , maximizing over gives the ALOHA throughput bound
If , choose and so that for all , uniformly in . For sufficiently small ,
because its derivative at zero is . Independence of arrivals and attempts gives
whenever . For any integer , stop at the stopping time . The stopped process is a nonnegative supermartingale. The optional stopping theorem, first at bounded times and then by a limit, yields the exponential-supermartingale escape bound
From every state with , a Poisson distribution arrival burst has a uniformly positive probability of sending the next backlog to at least , for any fixed . From there the probability of never revisiting is at least . By the Markov property at successive visits, the probability of infinitely many visits to this strip is zero: each visit has a uniform positive chance of being the last. This holds for every integer , so
Therefore the Markov chain is transient for every finite choice of . The proof is uniform in and does not infer stochastic transience merely from the approximate ordinary differential equations.
First include the mean-gain calculation preceding the numbered clauses. At each electron-multiplying CCD stage one electron contributes an expected electrons to the next stage. If is the charge after stage , conditional expectation gives . Iteration from input electrons yields
For small , if corrections of order are negligible.
In the high-gain approximation the output from one input electron has an exponential distribution of scale . Independent input electrons produce independent cascades, and their charges add. By convolution of independent random variables, assuming the formula for inputs,
Together with the single-electron base case this proves
It is a gamma distribution with shape and scale , so it is normalized and has expected value and variance . The formula is a continuous approximation to discrete output charge, not an exact integer-valued branching distribution; for there is a point mass at zero instead.
Assume (iii). Fix , a coordinate , and an event . Choose the bounded predictable risky strategy
and choose the numéraire holding to make the strategy self-financing with . Its terminal discounted value is
Condition (iii) yields
for every . The defining property of conditional expectation implies
Every coordinate is therefore a -martingale, so (iii) (i). This proves the martingale characterization by bounded self-financing strategies.
Give the uniform probability measure and let be the indicator function of the edge set. For partitions and , define the energy
Because conditional expectation is an orthogonal projection in L2 space, .
Suppose the pair of partitions is not -regular. For each irregular choose witnesses and with
Refine each by all sets and each by all sets . If the old partitions have cells, the refined ones have at most cells.
The Pythagorean theorem for the two nested conditional-expectation projections gives
Inside an irregular , the witness rectangle occupies at least an proportion and the mean of the displayed difference over it has magnitude greater than . The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality therefore gives an energy gain greater than
from that pair. Since irregular pairs have total weight greater than , the complete refinement raises the energy by more than .
Energy is at most one, so after at most refinements the process stops at an -regular pair of partitions. Iterating the cell-count bounds and from a bounded number of times produces a finite independent of . This proves the Bipartite Szemerédi regularity lemma.
Assume (iii). Fix and , and define
This is a stopping time: . Applying (iii) at time first to and then to the deterministic stopping time gives
Subtracting yields
By the defining characterization of conditional expectation, this says . Thus is a martingale, proving (i). Together the three implications establish the characterization of a martingale by stopped expectations.
Assume (i), and let be a stopping time. The increments of the stopped process satisfy
Because , taking conditional expectation given makes the right-hand side zero. Integrability follows from
a finite sum of integrable random variables. Hence is a martingale, proving (ii).
The arbitrage-free value of the discounted claim is the conditional expectation
Conditional on the observed path , the future multiplicative increments are independent of and have the same law as a fresh stock path divided by its initial value. Therefore
where
This is Risk-neutral valuation in the Cox--Ross--Rubinstein model for a path-dependent claim.
For an integrable random variable and a sub-sigma-algebra , the conditional expectation is an integrable, -measurable random variable satisfying
for every .
Write for all coordinates except , let be an independent random variable with the same distribution as , and let . Three equivalent forms of the Efron–Stein inequality are
for arbitrary square-integrable measurable with respect to , and
The first is the sharp choice within the second because conditional expectation is the least-squares projection. The first and third right sides are equal because two conditionally independent copies have expected squared difference twice their conditional variance.
The vector is Jointly Gaussian. Assuming , Gaussian conditional independence gives
Thus the required condition is . Under it, conditioning on supplies no further information after , and the Gaussian process regression posterior is
Both the conditional expectation and conditional variance depend only on ; neither contains or .
For a decision in the unit ball, conditional expectation under the posterior gives
The symmetric positive semidefinite matrix has a Rayleigh quotient maximized over by any unit eigenvector corresponding to its largest eigenvalue. Bayes decision rule therefore chooses any such eigenvector for the stated utility.
Let . It is a continuous square-integrable martingale, and the assumed bracket identity gives
for every continuous square-integrable martingale . Choose and use part (i):
Thus almost surely, and the conditional expectation property gives for every . Hence up to indistinguishability of stochastic processes.
The conditional expectation is the almost surely unique integrable, -measurable random variable such that for every .
The finite sigma-algebra is partitioned by the nonempty events
These are its atoms. Define the random variable
and give it any finite value on the union of the null atoms. It is -measurable and integrable. Every is a union of atoms, so
This constructs the requested variable directly, without invoking the general existence theorem for conditional expectation.
With zero interest rate, the bank account is constant. The risky asset is a continuous local martingale by assumption, while the European contingent claim price
is a true martingale by the defining property of conditional expectation. Thus the original probability measure is an equivalent local martingale measure for all traded discounted prices. The fundamental theorem of asset pricing then excludes arbitrage for admissible self-financing strategies.
Poisson mixture Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-07
A model with for a nonnegative random intensity. Conditional expectation and total variance give and , explaining overdispersion. A Poisson-gamma mixture gives the negative binomial distribution.