Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 124 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For the simple symmetric random walk, independence and the Rademacher distribution give the moment-generating functionThe function is even; for its derivative is , since the derivative of is at most one and . Here and are the hyperbolic cosine and hyperbolic tangent. Hence the exponential-moment estimate is
The supplied exponential maximal bound for a symmetric random walk now gives . For , choose ; for , use the elementary bound by one. Thus
Fix , choose , and set . For large these form an increasing sequence. Apply the preceding exponential maximal bound for a symmetric random walk at with threshold . The resulting probability is at mostWe have and . Choose strictly between and ; the displayed probabilities are . By the Borel-Cantelli first lemma, almost surely, eventually . For every , monotonicity of for large therefore givesIntersect the probability-one events for to obtain the upper law of the iterated logarithm: