Conditional Borel-Cantelli lemma Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
For events , put . Then almost surely on , while almost surely on . The proof applies the martingale convergence theorem to compensated sums and uses Kronecker lemma in the divergent case.
For independent increments, a random walk has . If is a bounded measurable set, its occupation time probability obeys . Consequently , and Tonelli's theorem makes this series finite almost surely. Kronecker lemma then gives the displayed zero occupation density. This also shows why its empirical occupation probabilities cannot converge to a probability measure simultaneously on all bounded intervals and the whole real line: continuity from below would contradict the preserved total mass one.
The dominated convergence theorem states that if measurable functions converge almost everywhere and their absolute values are bounded by a single Lebesgue integrable function, their limit is integrable and their integrals converge to its integral.
Put . The hypothesis makes summable. On the positive integers with counting measure define . For each fixed it tends to zero and . Dominated convergence gives
the stated Kronecker lemma.
For a bounded interval union , has density bounded by . Hence , and
By Tonelli's theorem, the nonnegative series is finite almost surely. Kronecker lemma then makes the empirical occupation fraction of tend to zero. The family of finite rational-endpoint interval unions is countable, so intersecting their probability-one events proves simultaneous convergence for all of them. For the whole line, every indicator is one. Thus
There is no countably additive Borel measure extending these values: would have measure zero by continuity from below, contrary to its assigned measure one. The escaped empirical mass cannot be captured by a probability measure on the real line.
The strong law of large numbers states that for independent identically distributed integrable random variables,
To prove it, set . The tail-sum formula gives , so the Borel-Cantelli lemmas make the two sequences eventually equal. Also
The Kolmogorov convergence theorem implies that converges almost surely, and Kronecker lemma yields
Finally , so the Cesàro mean of these expectations tends to .
Set , , and . Then is a martingale with bounded increments and conditional variance at most . On , localization and the martingale convergence theorem make converge, so the integer-valued increasing sequence is finite. On , applying martingale convergence to
and Kronecker lemma gives . Hence and . This is the Conditional Borel-Cantelli lemma, and proves the two events equal almost surely.