Each row sum is a sum of independent random signs. For , its moment generating function isFor example, follows by integrating for . Markov's inequality yields . Choosing gives for . The distribution is symmetric, so the same bound applies to its negative tail. A union bound provesfor , including the trivial endpoint .
If , then . Markov's inequality givesFor , the expected count satisfies . Part (ii) bounds its variance by , so Chebyshev's inequality givesCombining the tails provesThe blocks are consecutive in the cyclic order throughout; this is not the longest increasing subsequence with arbitrary omitted positions.
This establishes the longest increasing cyclic run of a random permutation concentration bound.
If has finite mean and variance , apply Markov to to obtain Chebyshev's inequality:For the first moment method, assume . Nonnegative integer values give , soFor a standard second moment method, suppose eventually, the second moments are finite, and . Equivalently, . The zero event is contained in , soHence . The second-moment condition controls the fluctuations relative to the mean; a large mean alone is insufficient.
There are exactly summands in , and the triangle inequality givesThe last step is convergence of arithmetic means of a sequence tending to zero. Thus in , and Markov's inequality gives
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 24 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
First stop the solution on leaving , at , and set . The stochastic integral representation, the Doob L2 maximal inequality and the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality give, for ,Here stopping ensures square integrability before the calculation, and explains the constant. The Gronwall inequality gives . For globally Lipschitz functions as coefficients, the global existence theorem for stochastic differential equations with Lipschitz coefficients supplies a nonexplosive solution. Letting increase and using Fatou's lemma proves the slightly stronger maximal second-moment bound under linear growth:
For coefficients that are only locally Lipschitz functions, let and replace the coefficients by and . These are globally Lipschitz functions, agree with the originals on , and obey the same linear growth condition for an SDE, since . The globally defined solutions agree until their common exits from by pathwise uniqueness. The uniform preceding estimate and Markov's inequality implyPatch the solutions before their increasing exit times. Their limiting lifetime exceeds almost surely by this bound. Thus a pathwise unique strong solution exists throughout even for locally Lipschitz coefficients.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 24 6 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use coordinates for paper, scissors and stone. Let take values in the lattice simplex . A uniformly selected unordered pair consists of types and , , with probability . Losing copies the winner, so the possible jumps of the continuous-time Markov chain areTies make no change. For arbitrary event rate , the respective transition rates are , and . ChooseThen the rates are exactly , , . The infinitesimal generator of this cyclic imitation chain iswhere and the three functions are, in that order, . Its drift is precisely
Here is a precise fluid limit with its error control. Suppose in probability, and let solve , . For every finite ,Indeed, the martingale decomposition of a density-dependent jump process givesThis follows by compensating each transition count by its integrated rate; the compensated counts are square-integrable martingales, with variance equal to the expected compensator. Since and on the simplex, the Doob L2 maximal inequality, applied coordinatewise, givesThe polynomial drift is Lipschitz on the compact simplex, with some finite constant . It preserves the sum of the coordinates, and each coordinate solves an equation of the form , so nonnegativity is preserved. Thus the ordinary differential equation stays in the simplex and exists for all time. The Gronwall inequality giveswhich proves the claim by Markov's inequality. This proves the required version directly, rather than invoking an unspecified approximation theorem.
For an interior trajectory, differentiating the logarithm of the product of numbers givesThe same identity for the product itself holds on the boundary, so is conserved. A strictly positive initial product keeps the deterministic trajectory away from the boundary. Except at these interior trajectories are periodic: the strictly concave function has smooth compact level curves surrounding its unique maximum, and the vector field is nonzero and tangent to each such curve.
The finite Markov chain behaves differently at long times. For , the change in during the first jump isThe other two terms are cyclic permutations. Their first-order contributions cancel, leaving the exact product decay in a cyclic imitation chain identityFor , while all three counts are positive, their product is at least , so . A missing type cannot reappear. If is the first loss of a type, thenOnce only two types remain, one always wins, so its count increases until an absorbing monochromatic vertex is reached, almost surely in finite time. The cases of one or two initially present types follow the same argument without the first stage. Every finite chain eventually becomes monochromatic, whereas an interior deterministic solution retains its positive product. The fluid limit holds on each fixed finite interval; it does not justify exchanging the limits and .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 33 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write for the driving white noise variance and . The autoregressive polynomial factors asThe discrete Gaussian white noise values are independent. The roots of are outside the unit disc, so expanding gives an absolutely summable causal time-series representation. Hence is a centered Gaussian process formed from driving white noise values at times at most . In particular, for , every driving white noise value with is independent of . The autocovariance tail recurrence of a causal ARMA process follows by taking covariance of the recursion with :
The roots of the characteristic polynomial of this tail recurrence are and . Let . There exist constants such thatFor example, put and ; then and reproduce the two starting values and therefore the whole recurrence. Choose strictly larger than and all the finitely many values with . Symmetry now givesFor negative this is stronger than the requested bound with . It also proves .
For the Fourier calculation, take positive and positive. The supplied equal-norm trigonometric identities require ; the usual intended range is . Because is odd, at every such nonzero frequency. The geometric series of and over terms vanish. They implyOther integer values of reduce modulo ; folding a negative frequency changes the sine coefficient only by a sign. The permitted zero frequency is handled below.
Grouping the double expectation sum according to the time lag yieldsReplace the two truncated sums for lag by full sums. Their total isEach replacement adds at most terms, each of absolute value at most one. This gives the finite-record Fourier covariance bound:Both coefficients have expected value zero, so this expectation is their covariance.
For each finite , has a multivariate normal distribution because it is a linear transformation of the Gaussian observation vector. If the variances converge to , its characteristic function converges tosince the cross-covariance tends to zero. This is the characteristic function of two independent centered normal variables; zero limiting variances are allowed.
We can calculate the variance limits rather than merely assume their existence. Grouping the cosine covariance sum givesOver a full record, . Truncation changes this by at most . The same statements hold for the sine products. Consequentlyand the identical main term and bound apply to . Absolute summability now gives
Specify the spectral convention to identify this limit. LetHere is the two-sided probability density function on , and is the one-sided probability density function on , satisfying . Thus each variance limit is . For this particular model, the filter representation also gives
For the specified squared-sum estimator, an exact expectation calculation uses :The missing tail and the terms vanish; indeed the bias is by the exponential covariance bound. Therefore is asymptotically unbiased for the one-sided probability density function . Under the common two-sided convention its limit in expectation is , so is the appropriately normalized estimator.
At an interior frequency with , the joint Gaussian limit gives the exponential limit of a one-sided periodogram:Moreover, for a centered Gaussian pair,The nondegenerate exponential limiting law rules out convergence in probability to . Thus the unsmoothed periodogram is not consistent at frequencies with positive spectrum, despite its asymptotic unbiasedness. If , the nonnegative estimator has expectation tending to zero and is consistent there by Markov's inequality. Smoothing an increasing number of nearby ordinates while shrinking the frequency bandwidth can remove the positive-spectrum variance obstruction.
For , the sine coefficient is identically zero and the cosine coefficient is the normalized sum of the observations. The corrected limits areThe joint limit is , independent in the degenerate sense. The exact expectation formula for still applies and tends to , but now when , with limiting variance . The estimator is again inconsistent. This covers the zero frequency allowed by the printed inequality on .
The figure uses the allowed cancellation , so the observations reduce to white noise. Orthogonal Fourier projections give the exponential law exactly at each plotted record length; increasing the record does not narrow the individual periodogram ordinate.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 11 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The assertion with the same in the degree interval and the final colour bound is false as printed. Fix , , let , and take . Every degree is , while every pair hypergraph codegree is one. For any proposed , choose large enough that . Nevertheless a matching in a graph contains at most edges, whereas there are edges in total. Thus every edge coloring requires at least colours, exceeding . The obstruction persists with arbitrarily small relative hypergraph codegree.
The meaningful asymptotic target separates the output tolerance from the input regularity error. For fixed rank and target , choose a sufficiently small and require degrees in as well as pair hypergraph codegrees at most . The semi-random method then gives . Here is the requested proof essay for that corrected conclusion, including its random rounds, tracking requirements and completion step.
A useful way to run all colour classes together is the auxiliary matching construction for hypergraph edge colouring. Use initial colours. Create a task vertex for each original edge , and a resource vertex for each original vertex and colour. An assignment is an -edge consisting of its task and the resources for all . A matching in a hypergraph in this auxiliary system is a proper partial colouring: a task cannot get two colours, and two edges sharing cannot use the same resource .
The auxiliary task degrees are , resource degrees are , and its pair hypergraph codegrees are at most . It is therefore nearly regular with small hypergraph codegrees. For and a nonempty original hypergraph, the hypergraph codegree condition also forces ; taking small absorbs rounding and ensures a large working degree. Rank one is immediate by assigning distinct colours to edges at each vertex.
The extra balance condition is important. Let be the set of tasks corresponding to edges through original vertex . A matching in a hypergraph missing a small fraction of all tasks need not leave few tasks in each . The Rödl nibble must leave at most unmatched tasks in every such star, where one may choose . This local requirement, rather than just a global almost-perfect matching in a hypergraph, is what permits a cheap final edge colouring.
Run a Rödl nibble on the auxiliary system, whose rank is . In a round of working degree , sample each surviving assignment independently with probability , for a small fixed . Accept the sampled assignments that meet no other sampled assignment. Delete every auxiliary vertex touched by any sampled assignment, including conflicted ones, before proceeding. The accepted assignments are a matching in a hypergraph, and later assignments cannot reuse a consumed task or resource. Record each discarded but uncoloured task as waste; it must be counted in the final residual graph.
For an auxiliary vertex of degree , the probability of remaining untouched isFor an auxiliary edge through a surviving vertex, the other vertices survive with probability approximately . Their incident trial families overlap in at most trials by the hypergraph codegree bound, so the overlap error in this product calculation is small. This leads to the degree trajectorywhile the surviving fraction of task vertices is approximately per round. For a sampled assignment, a union bound over at most conflicting assignments gives collision probability at most . More explicitly, for a fixed task the expected number of ordered sampled conflict pairs having the first assignment through that task is at mostThis bounds its waste probability. Thus productive deletion is first order in , and collision loss is second order.
The technical tracking step makes these expected value calculations locally simultaneous and keeps their errors from accumulating. Its requirements are: residual auxiliary degrees stay near their trajectory after controlled pruning; each original star has the predicted number of surviving tasks; and every star's total collision and pruning waste is small. The standard probabilistic tools enter at distinct points.
Within a fixed round, task-survival indicators are independent: trial families for different tasks are disjoint, even when their assignments share resources. Conditional Chernoff bounds therefore control the number of surviving tasks in each star. Collision loss has short certificates consisting of pairs of selected intersecting assignments. The number selected through one resource has a binomial distribution of bounded mean. Chernoff bounds truncate these numbers at a suitable logarithmic cutoff; after truncation one trial has only a logarithmically bounded effect on the certified collision count. A certifiable function concentration bound, or a corresponding exposure argument, then controls loss in each star. These rare local overload events have polynomially bounded local dependency neighborhoods in the working degree, so the Lovász local lemma can select a simultaneous outcome independent of the total number of vertices.
Residual-degree counts require additional care because they are not sums of independent indicators. Two survival tests share at most a hypergraph codegree's worth of trials; expanding their joint probabilities bounds their covariance by the corresponding relative overlap. For a residual-degree count with summands, overlapping summands and shared survival trials give a variance bound of the formChebyshev's inequality then bounds by . This gives a small exceptional fraction when the relative hypergraph codegree is sufficiently small; it does not by itself make every degree good. The tracking argument records and prunes these exceptional configurations, bounding their contribution to each star by codegree-weighted exposure and the same local-loss bookkeeping. Markov's inequality controls exceptional mass, and repeated conditional concentration controls the retained counts. One must not apply an independent Chernoff bound directly to a residual degree or infer a uniform star bound just from a global expected loss. Keeping the pruning loss explicitly is the key distinction between a valid Rödl nibble argument and those shortcuts.
Choose the parameters in this order: first and ; next so small that ; nextand finally the initial regularity/hypergraph codegree tolerance small enough for all tracking and pruning errors. This is a bounded number of rounds depending on the tolerances, not on the graph order. After rounds, the surviving task fraction is at most approximately , while accumulated collision loss is . Reserving the remaining margin for tracking and pruning leaves at most uncoloured edges at every original vertex. The working degree is still a fixed positive multiple of , namely about , so the large-degree estimates remain applicable throughout.
Finally use a fresh palette on the residual original hypergraph. Its maximum degree is at most ; an edge meets at most others. Greedy colouring therefore needs at most fresh colours. The total is at mostfor sufficiently large , already ensured by choosing small. This completes the passage from the locally balanced Rödl nibble to the hypergraph chromatic index bound. The degree tolerance must be the small input parameter ; replacing it by the entire output allowance removes the slack and leads precisely to the complete-graph counterexample above.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 11 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For and nonempty , letThe Talagrand convex distance isEquivalently,For completeness, let be a closest point of the finite convex hull to zero. If , minimality gives for every . Taking proves that the supremum is at least . Conversely each permitted has by Cauchy-Schwarz. The weights are nonnegative because the hull has nonnegative coordinates. If , both sides are zero. This proves the dual definition used below.
We prove Talagrand's convex distance inequality by induction on the number of factors. Write , with measure , and . For a last-coordinate value , let . Choose a section of largest probability , and put . The total event probability is .
If has positive probability, combine mismatch vectors from and from . A weight on the second section contributes at most in the last coordinate. Convexity of the squared Euclidean norm gives, for every ,The last-coordinate contribution is actually zero if , so the displayed upper bound remains valid. Hölder's inequality and the induction hypothesis yieldFor a zero-probability section use directly, so no division by zero or exponent of an infinite quantity is needed.
The scalar estimate for Talagrand product induction isHere is its proof. For set . If , take ; the logarithm of the left expression is . Put . Then andsince for . Thus . If , choose . The already proved boundary case gives . The same direct choice covers .
Average the resulting section bounds over :where the last inequality is equivalent to . The induction starts on the zero-coordinate singleton, where every positive-probability event is the whole space and the moment is one. HenceWe assume ; a zero-probability event has no finite right-hand bound to prove. Markov's inequality also gives
For the subsequence application, let be the longest increasing subsequence length for independent sequence coordinates. A witness of length uses only positions. If and satisfies , at least witness positions must change: all unchanged witness positions remain in increasing order. Put weights on the witness and zero elsewhere. The dual distance definition giveswhere the latter expression increases with for . Therefore the increasing-subsequence certificate concentration bound isIf the lower event has probability zero the conclusion is immediate.
Let be an integer median, so . Taking the two thresholds in the bound gives, for ,For the lower event is empty. In a nonempty sequence . Integration of these tails gives an explicit mean-median estimate: use for and for , obtainingWriting , the median property also gives . Consequently, for a universal constant , all satisfyThus the subsequence length is concentrated near its mean on the scale , rather than the generic coordinate-exposure scale . This argument applies directly to finite-valued independent sequences. Independent continuous samples follow by refining finite coordinate discretizations; the strict-order pattern stabilizes almost surely when ties have probability zero. A uniform random permutation is the rank sequence of independent continuous samples, so it has the same subsequence-length concentration. Arbitrarily dependent random sequences are not covered by the product-space assumption.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 41 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For nontrivial positive claim sizes in the classical risk model and , the adjustment coefficient is the unique positive solutionIndeed, has , , and is strictly convex. It becomes positive near the right endpoint of the moment-generating function domain. For a finite endpoint this follows from the assumed divergence; for an infinite endpoint, for some gives an exponential lower bound on , which eventually exceeds any linear function. Convexity gives existence and uniqueness of the positive crossing and .
Put and . Substituting into the supplied survival renewal equation for a classical risk model, and using , yieldsMultiplying by gives the proper renewal-type equationThe exponential tilt of the ruin renewal kernel turns a defective kernel into a probability density function, because the tail integration identity givesThis identity follows also by integrating and applying Tonelli theorem. The tilted probability density function defines a nonarithmetic distribution, even if the claim size probability distribution itself has atoms.
Differentiate to calculate its mean:It is finite and positive because is inside the finite moment-generating function domain. Next, reversing the order of integration givesThe forcing function is directly Riemann integrable. Choose with . Markov's inequality bounds by , so is bounded by a constant times . It is continuous; on finite intervals continuity controls its Riemann sums, and the exponential envelope controls the tails. These are sufficient conditions for direct Riemann integrability.
Iterating the renewal equation by convolution gives , where is the renewal measure. The remainder after iterations is bounded on each fixed interval by a constant times the chance that a sum of positive interarrivals remains in that interval, which tends to zero. The key renewal theorem, applicable to this nonarithmetic distribution of finite mean and the directly integrable forcing, now gives the interior adjustment coefficient ruin prefactor:Both numerator and denominator are positive, so .
For the unit-rate shape-two Erlang distribution, , and . Write , so positive loading requires . Dividing the adjustment coefficient equation by its nonzero root gives . ThusThe last simplification uses ; it is the Erlang shape-two ruin prefactor. Its value depends on the premium-to-arrival ratio, which is not specified numerically.
For the final exponential representation, evaluating at zero in the survival renewal equation for a classical risk model gives . If the slower term is present, necessarily and . Comparing with the finite positive asymptotic constant just proved yieldsA smaller adjustment coefficient would make the limit zero and a larger one would make it infinite. Here the leading exponential term determines a ruin adjustment coefficient. The coefficient need not be assumed positive to identify the leading term.
The wording does not specify that is nonzero. If and , the only surviving term instead gives , and . This case is realizable: claims with an exponential distribution of rate have ultimate ruin probability . Negative would make the ultimate ruin probability negative for large , and both coefficients zero are incompatible with a nontrivial positive claim rate and mean. These observations specify the coefficient qualification needed for the usual answer.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 ii Paper 2 25J Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A family is uniformly integrable ifThis implies integrability and a uniform bound on , since . Convergence in probability means for every ; convergence in means . The latter implies the former by Markov's inequality. Conversely, convergence in probability together with uniform integrability of implies that is integrable and in . Moreover an -convergent sequence is uniformly integrable. This is the criterion that excludes rare very large values from carrying a nonvanishing first-moment error.
For the sum family, use the pointwise boundIndeed, if the left indicator is one then the larger of exceeds , and twice that larger number bounds . Taking expectations and the supremum over bounds the sum-family tail by the sum of their two uniformly vanishing tails. Thus the whole family of sums is uniformly integrable, with no independence assumption.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 15 2 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
We use three precise inputs. The Harris-Kesten theorem says that independent bond percolation on the square lattice has percolation critical probability . Sharpness of the percolation transition says that, for every , there are such that for all positive integers . Finally, the BK inequality says that increasing connection events with disjoint bond witnesses have joint probability at most the product of their individual probabilities. All three statements concern the independent product law used here.
The sharpness bound implies finite percolation susceptibility. Indeed, with , summing over square shells givesA radius bound alone would give only a square-root exponential volume bound. To obtain the requested exponential volume bound, we prove the tree-graph moment bound for a percolation cluster:where .
Expand the left-hand side as a sum over ordered marked vertices of the probability that belong to one open cluster. Whenever that event occurs, a finite open tree connects the marked vertices. Delete unmarked leaves and suppress unmarked degree-two vertices. Treat a marked internal vertex as a leaf attached by a zero-length connection, and split any higher-degree branch into degree-three branch points, again with zero-length connections. This gives an abstract binary tree with labelled leaves, branch points and connections. Its nonempty connecting paths use disjoint sets of open bonds. Coincident marked vertices are allowed: their zero-length connections have empty witnesses.
There are such binary tree topologies. For example, the topology with two leaves is unique; inserting the next labelled leaf subdivides one of the edges of a topology with leaves, giving the usual double-factorial recursion. For a fixed topology and fixed positions of all its vertices, the BK inequality bounds the disjoint connection event by the product of the corresponding factors. Sum over all and all branch-point positions. Keep the root fixed, and successively sum a leaf away. Translation invariance gives at every step. The resulting sum is . Summing the topologies proves the bound.
Since , expansion of the exponential, justified by monotone convergence, givesTake and write . Markov's inequality yields . To remove the prefactor, choose an integer with . For the bound is at most . For , useFor , setting therefore proves the bound with unit prefactor:At , and any positive works.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 31 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For , the continuous martingale is . Since has the centered normal distribution of variance ,For , the continuous martingale is . The Gaussian fourth moment givesThis verifies both cases. The time integral in the printed identity is understood with its omitted .
Write . The derivatives of the approximations areThus . The Itô formula gives . This use of the formula is valid despite the two second-derivative discontinuities: mollify the function , whose derivative is Lipschitz. Its smooth derivatives converge boundedly, while the second derivatives are bounded by and converge except at . For every , the normal distribution of assigns those points zero probability. Dominated convergence for the drift integral and the Itô isometry for the stochastic integral pass the smooth formula to . Equivalently, this identifies the martingale in the assumed decomposition and permits its cross-covariances to be calculated.
If , then . The Itô isometry and Doob L2 maximal inequality therefore give, for every fixed ,The Gaussian density is bounded by , soConsequently the processes are Cauchy in the complete space of continuous random paths with norm . They have a continuous-path limit there. Limits obtained for different integer horizons agree on overlaps; choose these versions consistently. Each is adapted, and passing to the limit in shows that is a continuous martingale. Letting in the preceding bound proves the requested convergence, with an explicit rate:The same Itô isometry identifies , with .
There is a genuine factor-of-two error in the last printed conclusion. The stated has second derivative almost everywhere, and the generator in the decomposition is one half of the second derivative. Hence the exact identity isBecause and , this already proves uniform convergence on bounded intervals to . It does not by itself prove almost-sure convergence of the full sequence, so we supply that additional step.
Take . For each fixed integer and each , the maximal-error bound and Markov's inequality implyThe first Borel-Cantelli lemma, applied to rational positive and integer , gives uniform almost-sure convergence of this subsequence on every bounded interval. Therefore uniformly there almost surely.
For , the indicator windows are nested. The ratio-one interpolation for shrinking-window occupation integrals givesBoth ratios tend uniformly to one as . The two bounds converge uniformly to the continuous nonnegative process , so the entire sequence does too. Thus the correct normalized conclusion isand with the factor actually printed in the question the limit isThese are the occupation approximations for Brownian local time. In the Tanaka formula convention, is the local time of a semimartingale at zero. It is not identically zero: for , since starts at zero and is a martingale. Thus the discrepancy cannot be removed by treating the two limits as equal. The standard normalization is also given in Lalley's notes on the Itô calculus and local time.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2011 ia Paper 2 10F a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
For any nonnegative random variable with finite expectation and any , Markov's inequality statesIndeed , and taking expectations proves the bound. Nonnegativity is essential.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2011 ia Paper 2 10F b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Each waiting time has the geometric distribution on with success probability : a wait of length consists of failures followed by the prescribed success, so its probability is . HenceDisjoint successive blocks of independent tosses give independent waiting times. More explicitly, any specified list of block lengths determines exactly one allowed sequence of heads and tails and has probability , the product of the individual block probabilities.
There are waiting times. Multiplication of their probability generating functions and addition of their expectations giveTo recover its probability mass function, expand by the negative binomial series:The coefficient of is thereforeand it is zero below . Equivalently there are compositions of into positive block lengths, each with probability . This is the negative binomial distribution for a sum of geometric waiting times, even though the desired outcome alternates between blocks.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 32 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
An effective bandwidth converts a traffic distribution and a quality-of-service requirement into a capacity requirement, penalizing bursts as well as mean load. Let be the traffic generated in one observation interval and assume its moment-generating function is finite for some positive parameters. Write . The Chernoff bound follows immediately from Markov's inequality applied to :Optimizing gives , where the supremum is restricted to finite exponential moments. This exhibits the effective bandwidth as the load appropriate to exponential tail control, not an extra physical stream of traffic.
For the mean and peak limits of effective bandwidth, if exponential moments exist near zero, the cumulant-generating function expansion isFor small , , with the variance giving the first burstiness correction. convexity of and show that its secant slope is nondecreasing; Jensen's inequality also gives .
If is bounded with essential supremum , then . For any , the probability is positive andLet and then . For large , , so very stringent exponential tail control approaches peak provisioning. If traffic is unbounded and every positive exponential moment is finite, the same lower-bound argument gives . If exponential moments cease to exist beyond a finite parameter, is infinite there; one cannot assign a finite large- peak interpretation to that traffic.
For example, deterministic traffic has . A burst of size with Bernoulli distribution probability giveswhich moves from to . For Poisson packet count of mean and packet size , , showing a mean limit but no finite peak limit.
For independent traffic sources, logarithmic generating functions add, so effective bandwidths add. For arrivals in a window of length , use the rate-valued definition . A resource with rate capacity then satisfiesThus a sufficient admission condition for a target probability is for some . Independence is needed for this additive form; correlated sources require the joint exponential moment.
A queue involves a supremum over time windows, not merely one fixed window. For independent identically distributed discrete-time traffic increments , constant service , and stationary workloadthe workload Chernoff bound for independent increments follows from a union bound:, whenever ,The requirement is precisely . This explains why effective bandwidth is useful for buffer and delay design: the relevant time scale and tail parameter depend on the service rule and target overflow risk. A single-window bound cannot be silently substituted for an infinite-horizon workload bound.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 12 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write for the balanced graph blow-up of a complete graph, with classes of size ; containment here is as a subgraph, not necessarily an induced subgraph. The logarithmic form of the Erdős-Stone theorem is: for fixed and , there are and such thatThus the guaranteed balanced part size is at least , with independent of . We prove the logarithmic Erdős-Stone theorem by a density-to-cliques step and a constructive dense clique family blow-up lemma.
First choose a fixed large enough that , where is the edge count of the Turán graph. A uniformly chosen -vertex subset has expected edge count at least . If its induced graph contains no , the Turan theorem bounds that count by . Since the count is always at most , the probability that the subset contains an -clique is at least . Double counting the incidences between such subsets and their cliques gives, for ,for a fixed and all sufficiently large . Here . This is clique supersaturation by sampling.
We now prove the needed dense clique family blow-up lemma, with the following stronger induction invariant. Given any family of at least distinct -cliques, there is a complete -partite subgraph with each class of size , containing that many pairwise vertex-disjoint transversal members of , each with one vertex in every class. Extra edges within its classes can be ignored. We may suppose . For , any singletons suffice, and we may take once is large.
For , put . Repeatedly delete every member of the current family containing an -clique whose number of extensions is at most . Each such face is processed at most once, and there are at most possible faces. At most members are deleted. The remaining family has size at least , and every face that remains has more than extensions. Its family of -faces has size at least , since each face is in at most members.
Apply the induction hypothesis to these faces. It gives a complete -partite subgraph with vertices in each class and a matching of transversal -faces from the family. Form a bipartite graph whose left vertices are the and whose right vertices are the original vertices; join to when . Every left degree exceeds .
The following common neighbourhood from bipartite density estimate is elementary. In a bipartite graph with class sizes and at least edges, averaging over left subsets of size and using convexity of the integer sequence giveswhenever . The last inequality follows by comparing the factors in the two binomial coefficients; the integer convexity follows from the nondecreasing first differences .
ChooseFor large , , so . The estimate supplies selected faces with a common extension set of size at least . This extension set is disjoint from the selected faces: a vertex in any one of them cannot extend that face. Their union has vertices in each of the old classes, with all required cross edges; choose distinct common extension vertices as a new class. Attaching one different extension vertex to each selected face also gives disjoint members of . This completes the induction, with positive constants independent of . Apply it to the clique family above and take .
The logarithmic order cannot be increased in a uniform forcing result. Put , choose strictly between and one, and take a binomial random graph. Its edge density exceeds with probability tending to one, by the variance estimate for a sum of independent edge indicators. With , the expected number of ordered embeddings of is at mostFor and , the logarithm of this bound is negative of order . Markov's inequality therefore makes the probability of any such copy tend to zero. Both events hold simultaneously for some graphs of every sufficiently large order. There are graphs meeting the density hypothesis whose largest balanced blow-up has part size . This upper bound concerns what density can force; it is not an upper bound for every dense graph, since a complete graph has much larger blow-ups.
Finally, is the square of a cycle, for . Any three consecutive vertices form a triangle in a graph. In a proper three-colouring, once the first three colours are fixed, each subsequent vertex must repeat the colour three positions earlier. Closing the cycle is possible precisely when . Conversely, repeating the three colours gives such a colouring whenever . In that case embeds in , and the density exceeds the bipartite Turan theorem threshold by a fixed amount, so the theorem forces eventually. If , the balanced Turán graphs have density at least and contain no graph of chromatic number greater than three. They give a counterexample sequence. Exactly the cycle lengths divisible by three have the required property.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 12 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
Expose the independent coordinates one at a time and define the Doob exposure martingaleFor a fixed exposed prefix, couple the future coordinates identically under two choices of . The coordinate-change hypothesis bounds the difference of the resulting conditional expectations by . Thus the increment has conditional mean zero and lies in a conditional interval of length at most . This range bound, rather than merely , gives the sharp constant in the McDiarmid inequality.
Here is a proof of the needed Hoeffding lemma. For a mean-zero random variable in an interval of length , let . Its second derivative is the variance under the exponentially tilted distribution. A random variable in has variance at most : the inequality gives . Hence , and imply , for either sign of .
Apply this conditionally to each increment and iterate the conditional expectation:For , Markov's inequality bounds the upper tail by . Taking and then applying the same argument to givesAt the bound is immediate. If all vanish, is constant on the product support and the positive tails are zero, so that degenerate case is handled directly.
For a binomial random graph, let coordinate be the entire vector of edges from vertex to vertices of smaller label. The coordinates are independent finite probability spaces. Changing coordinate changes only edges incident to that one vertex. Deleting the vertex gives the same graph under both outcomes, and each outcome's chromatic number is either that graph's chromatic number or one more. Thus the coordinate range is at most one. Taking all and proves vertex exposure for chromatic number:Using individual edges as coordinates would give a weaker scale; grouping the incident edges is what yields the required bound.
For the expectation asymptotic, take fixed , put , and write . We outline both bounds and the step that turns probability estimates into an expectation estimate. For each fixed , the expected number of independent sets of size isIts logarithm is . Thus Markov's inequality gives with probability tending to one, and yields the corresponding lower bound on its expectation.
For the upper bound, set and , with . The key uniform fact is that every vertex subset of size at least contains an independent -set with probability tending to one. For a fixed subset of size , let count its independent -sets and let . The normalized dependency sum in Janson inequality is bounded byThe term is . The remaining overlap terms give the same order or less: use for large , and split the sum at . For the lower half the terms beyond decrease at the initial endpoint and are exponentially small at the other endpoint; for the upper half, makes every endpoint exponent negative of order . Also is exponentially small on that scale. The exponential form of Janson inequality therefore gives, uniformly for ,for a positive constant depending only on . A union bound over at most subsets succeeds, because is of order . This is independent sets in every large subset of a dense random graph.
On that event, repeatedly remove an independent -set and assign it one new colour until fewer than vertices remain; colour the remainder individually. This gives . The failure probability is exponentially small compared with , and always , so the failure event contributes negligibly to the expectation. Combining the upper and lower bounds and then letting provesThis is the chromatic number of a binomial random graph asymptotic. The slash in the printed expression must be read with as the denominator; a multiplicative reading would eventually exceed . At the endpoint probabilities and , the chromatic numbers are respectively one and for , so this logarithmic formula is intended for .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 ia Paper 2 11F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
For a nonnegative random variable with finite expected value, and , Markov's inequality states . Indeed , and taking expected values proves the bound. For a random variable with mean and finite variance , apply Markov's inequality to at threshold . This proves Chebyshev's inequality:For independent and identically distributed random variables with finite mean and variance , the sample mean has expected value and variance . ThusThis is the weak law: , with the finite-variance hypotheses used in this direct deduction.
The more general weak law of large numbers needs only . To obtain that version, truncate . For fixed the bounded variables obey the result just proved. Their means tend to , while Markov's inequality bounds the probability that the two sample means differ by more than by . First take and then ; the integrable tail vanishes, proving the full integrable i.i.d. version as well.
Finally assume and . For every , implies , so Markov's inequality givesIf , the derivative of the right-hand side is , so its minimum is at . The Cantelli inequality follows:If , almost surely and the same bound is immediate. The bound is sharp: put mass at and the remaining mass at ; this has exactly the prescribed mean and variance.
