Let be the branching extinction probability of a Galton-Watson process with offspring probability generating function . Conditional on extinction, the probability of children is multiplied by : every child's descendants must also become extinct. Hence the new probability generating function is and its mean is . If , the total progeny of a branching process has conditional expected value , and unconditionally . The Markov inequality gives a finite-total-progeny tail bound without discarding the survival mass.
Cantelli inequality 2026-10-06
For a finite-variance random variable, shift its centred version by and apply Markov inequality to the square. Minimizing at proves the bound. A two-point distribution attains equality. If the variance is zero, the centred variable vanishes almost surely.
Chernoff bound Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For every , Markov inequality applied to gives
Optimizing over gives the Chernoff bound in terms of the moment-generating function of .
Coalescing coupling 2026-10-06
A coalescing coupling of probability distributions of two Markov chains keeps them identical after a meeting time . The coupling inequality for total variation gives . A uniform bound on , combined with Markov inequality, bounds the mixing time of a Markov chain.
For , the number of blocks is finite almost surely. On a finite restriction, the expected time to reach blocks is at most . Markov inequality, followed by increasing the restriction, gives . Let , then use rational times and monotonicity to obtain the assertion simultaneously for every .
Convergence in L2 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Convergence in means . It implies convergence in probability by Markov inequality.
For independent uniform couplings on and equatorial initial bath spins,
At fixed finite , the mean tends to zero and the mean square tends to as time grows. At any fixed nonzero time, the mean-square bracket is strictly below one; the Markov inequality proves coherence tends to zero in probability as grows. Individual finite realizations still exhibit finite spin-bath coherence recurrence.
For with a standard normal distribution and , split the Gaussian integral at zero and complete the square to obtain , where is the standard normal distribution function. This converts a bound on an absolute Gaussian random variable into a two-sided Gaussian tail bound using Markov inequality.
First moment method Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For a nonnegative integer-valued random variable , Markov inequality gives
Consequently, proves that some outcome has , while shows that with probability tending to one.
Fix , , and with . A binomial random graph has one giant component of the displayed order and all other graph components are tree components of orders at most , with high probability. The expected value and variance of the isolated vertex count concentrate it around . A Cayley formula upper bound for connected sets excludes component sizes through a small fixed fraction of ; the empty-graph cut bound excludes the remaining sizes up to . An extra-edge count excludes cyclic small graph components. The expected value of the number of vertices in small nonisolated tree components is , where . The Markov inequality completes the count of vertices outside the unique large graph component.
If two parameters are separated by at least in a metric, any estimator gives a test by deciding whether its distance from the first parameter is below . For , the event and Markov inequality give the displayed minimax risk bound, where is the product likelihood ratio. The unrestricted claim for every positive is false when both factors on the right are negative.