Let denote the join of measurable partitions recording the first observations, and set , with . The entropy of a countable measurable partition is , using natural logarithms and . Null atoms can be discarded. Throughout, is a probability measure.
The stronger property needed for monotonicity of normalized block entropy is that its increments decrease. Define
Since conditioning reduces entropy, . The conditional entropy chain rule and measure preservation give
It follows that , and consequently
This uses stationarity as well as the entropy chain rule; subadditivity alone would not establish monotonicity of every successive ratio.
The entropy rate of a measurable partition and the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy are, respectively,
One may equivalently take the supremum over countable finite-entropy measurable partitions.
The Shannon-McMillan-Breiman theorem states that for a countable measurable partition with , the normalized information
converges almost everywhere and in to a invariant function with integral . Here is the atom containing . If is an ergodic transformation, then almost everywhere. We prove the general form, including an explicit formula for its limit.
Let be the sigma-algebra generated by , let be trivial, and put . For every atom , the probabilities
form a bounded conditional-expectation martingale. The Martingale convergence theorem gives almost everywhere and in . Each of these probabilities is positive almost everywhere on : for example, integrating over the measurable set gives zero. Countability of lets us choose a common full-measure set for every atom.
The conditional information functions
therefore converge almost everywhere to . We need an integrable bound on this sequence; convergence of the probabilities alone would not supply one after taking logarithms. The allowed maximal inequality for conditional information functions gives, for ,
Combining this with the bound by and the tail integral formula for moments yields
Thus , and the dominated convergence theorem gives in . In particular,
because is the average of the decreasing sequence .
The information chain rule, applied from the final observation backwards, gives the exact identity
Indeed, the symbol at time is conditioned on times ; pulling that conditional probability back by gives . Measure preservation is sufficient for this pullback identity.
We now prove the required triangular ergodic averaging lemma in this instance. Put . Then almost everywhere, , and . Split the difference between the displayed triangular sum and . Terms whose index is at least are bounded by . The remaining terms are at most
After division by , each of these finitely many end terms tends to zero almost everywhere by the linear growth bound for integrable observables proved in Question 1. Applying the Birkhoff ergodic theorem to , for every fixed , therefore gives
These conditional expectations decrease to zero almost everywhere: they decrease, and their integrals tend to zero. Letting , then applying the Birkhoff ergodic theorem to , proves
For convergence, measure preservation gives the direct estimate
Combine this with convergence of the ergodic averages of . Finally, . In the ergodic case the invariant sigma-algebra is trivial, completing the familiar form of the theorem:
For a probability measure-preserving system and a countable measurable partition of finite entropy, converges almost everywhere and in to an invariant function whose integral is . For an ergodic transformation, the limit is the constant . In general it is . The Martingale convergence theorem, maximal inequality for conditional information functions, and triangular ergodic averaging lemma prove this directly, without invertibility.