Let . The points lie on the specified graph and converge in to . They form a Cauchy sequence in the induced metric, but their only possible limit is absent from the space. Adding does not supply that missing limit. Hence the specified space is not complete.
For the unheaded request on , use the arctangent pullback metric
Positivity, symmetry and the triangle inequality follow from the ordinary distance, and injectivity of gives only if . The sequence is Cauchy for this metric, because , but cannot converge to any finite real : that would require . Thus this metric makes incomplete, even though it induces its usual topology.
The rational sequence satisfies . It is therefore a Cauchy sequence in the induced metric on . Any limit in would also be its real limit, which is . Thus
Completeness concerns limits lying in the space, so being a dense subset of does not suffice.
A metric space is a complete metric space when every Cauchy sequence converges to a point of that space: for each , the condition for all sufficiently large must imply existence of with .
A Cauchy sequence in is also Cauchy in , so it converges there by the assumed completeness. Its limit remains between zero and one, since inequalities are preserved under limits. Therefore
This is an instance of the fact that a closed subset of a complete metric space is complete with its induced metric.
Let for every , and let differ from only at , where . Under the left shift, the unique defect of lies at coordinate . Every fixed finite coordinate set eventually avoids the defect, so
in the product topology. If a metric induces this topology, convergence and the triangle inequality imply . But left shift invariance would give
for every , a contradiction. Thus no compatible metric invariant under the left shift exists. The discrete metric is shift invariant, but it induces the discrete topology rather than the product topology; compatibility is the essential restriction.
Let and be Radon-Nikodym derivatives. Use the following normalizations of the Kullback-Leibler divergence, total variation distance and unnormalized Hellinger distance:
We use and assign infinite Kullback-Leibler divergence if , where denotes absolute continuity of measures. Common domination alone also suffices for the inequalities with the extended-value convention. The negative part of the logarithmic integral is integrable: on , . Thus the extended-value integral defining the Kullback-Leibler divergence is well-defined. These expressions do not depend on which common dominating measure is chosen. The Kullback-Leibler divergence is generally asymmetric and therefore fails a defining property of a metric.
For completeness, the integral formula for total variation distance follows by taking : since , the positive and negative parts of have the same integral, and this set attains the supremum.
Put , by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. A second application gives
The logarithmic inequality in the hint implies for . Apply it to on :
Multiplying by and integrating proves
If on a set of positive -measure, the right side is finite but the Kullback-Leibler divergence is infinite, so the inequality is immediate. Thus
This total variation–Hellinger–relative entropy inequality requires the stated Hellinger distance normalization for its first constant. With the alternative convention , the correct comparison is and . In particular, and have .
Here is a testing form of the Le Cam two-point lemma. Suppose two parameter values in a metric space have separation , and let be the corresponding observation laws. Every estimator satisfies
To prove it, classify by the closer of the two parameters, breaking a tie in favour of one. Let . On , the triangle inequality implies , while on it implies . Hence the sum of the two probabilities in the display is at least
At least one is at least half the sum, proving the claim. It also gives a lower bound for the maximum expected metric loss.
For absolute-error loss, or any loss given by a metric, there is a stronger expectation form. Take densities relative to and use the triangle inequality under their overlap:
Therefore the Le Cam lower bound under absolute-error loss is
Both arguments are valid for randomized estimators as well, by adjoining the independent randomization to the observation; doing so does not change total variation distance.
For the normal distribution model, assume the usual nondegenerate convention and use the full product observation laws. Choose
For one observation, its Gaussian log likelihood ratio is
Under the first law, and . Thus the Kullback-Leibler divergence between normal distributions is
For the independent and identically distributed random variables, the joint log likelihood ratio is the sum of the individual ones, so the Kullback-Leibler divergence of the two full statistical samples is . The comparison just proved implies . Applying the expectation form of the Le Cam two-point lemma gives
This is a Gaussian location minimax lower bound under absolute-error loss. The constant may depend on the fixed known , but neither on the estimator nor on . If a signed nonzero scale were used, the same result holds with in place of . If zero noise were allowed, would estimate exactly, so a positive lower bound would be false; positive variance is necessary.
Nonnegativity and symmetry are immediate. Moreover, exactly when , which means for every .
For three sequences , if and agree through coordinate and and agree through coordinate , then and agree through coordinate . Hence
and therefore
Thus is a metric; in fact, the stronger first inequality makes it an ultrametric.
Write for . Every summand in is nonnegative and at most , so the series converges. Symmetry is immediate. If , then for every . For arbitrary , choose a sequence of converging to in operator norm. Since is fixed, . The continuous dual space separates points, so .
The function is increasing and subadditive:
Combining this with the triangle inequality for each and summing proves the triangle inequality for . Hence is a metric on .
Suppose first that converges weakly to , meaning that
For each fixed , the th summand of tends to zero. A finite-head and geometric-tail estimate, using that every summand is bounded by , then gives .
Conversely, if , each nonnegative summand tends to zero, and therefore
for every . Given and , choose with . Since ,
Taking the limit superior and then letting proves weak convergence. Thus
The same approximation argument for neighbourhoods shows that induces the weak topology on , as in the metrization of the weak topology on a bounded set.
If is conjugate to , the given duality of sequence spaces applied twice gives
so is a reflexive Banach space. Its closed unit ball is weakly compact by the weak compactness characterization of reflexivity. Since induces that topology on ,
Put
The numerator is the linear kernel, while the reciprocal of the denominator is the kernel from part c applied to and . The product of positive-semidefinite kernels therefore shows that is a positive-semidefinite kernel. The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality give , so
Each power is positive semidefinite by the Schur product theorem, and the convergent sum is positive semidefinite.
Moreover . If is its canonical feature map, then
The feature-space norm gives symmetry and the triangle inequality. Finally, implies , hence and
which is equivalent to . Thus is a metric rather than merely a pseudometric.
Point process Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
A point process records random locations by a random measure that counts them. Examples include arrival times of a queue, positions of stars, and the finite eigenvalue configuration of a random matrix. The count in an observation window is a random variable; its expected value is supplied by the intensity measure of a point process, while its fluctuations and relationships with other windows require more information.
For a precise spatial convention, take with its Borel sigma-algebra and a probability space . A locally finite point process is a measurable function from to the space of locally finite point measures, equipped with the sigma-algebra generated by evaluations for Borel sets . Each realization has the form
where is finite or countable and repeated locations are allowed; is a Dirac measure. Here a point measure is a counting measure with possible multiplicities, rather than the counting measure of a set of distinct locations.[ref]
Local finiteness means for every bounded Borel set , on a single almost sure event. In it suffices to check the countable collection of balls of integer radius centered at the origin, and this is equivalent to finiteness on every compact set. On a general measurable space there is no notion of boundedness without additional structure: state a metric or an explicit family of observation windows. Another convention on locally compact spaces requires finiteness on compact sets; this need not coincide with finiteness on all bounded sets outside . Local finiteness does not require finitely many points in all of .[ref]
For unit-modulus prime values, pretentious distance is the Euclidean metric on the finite vectors . On whole arithmetic functions it is only a pseudometric: it sees neither values on prime powers nor primes above the cutoff. Even for every cutoff, the functions one and have distance zero but differ on nonsquarefree integers. The norm representation proves the triangle inequality and identifies exactly the quotient on which separation holds.
A homeomorphic embedding of a metric space induces a homeomorphic embedding of its probability measures for their weak topologies. The inverse continuity follows from the open-set Portmanteau theorem, since every relatively open set is the trace of an ambient open set. This does not give surjectivity onto when points of are outside the embedded image.
For metric spaces with compact, the projection with a compact factor is closed: if is a closed set and converges to , choose with . Sequential compactness supplies , so , proving . The projection map is also continuous for the sum metric. Without compactness, the closed set projects to the nonclosed set .
Pseudometric Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
A pseudometric satisfies the axioms of a metric except that distinct points may have distance zero.
Skorokhod representation theorem Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
For convergence in distribution of random elements in a separable complete metric space, one can construct copies of the sequence and its limit on one probability space which converge almost surely. The copies preserve the individual laws; they need not preserve the original dependence between sequence elements. Suitable more general versions permit a separably supported limit in a metric space.
Topological completeness Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
A metrizable space is topologically complete when some metric inducing its topology is complete. The given metric need not be complete: the open interval is an example. A Polish space additionally requires separability.
Topological space Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A topological space is a set together with a topology , a family of subsets satisfying
Here is the power set; the union may have arbitrarily many members, while the intersection must be finite. The members of are the open sets. These are axioms about subsets, with no assumed metric or surrounding Euclidean space. [ref]
Figure 1.
Two topologies on the same two-point set and continuity of the identity map
. Details.
For , the discrete topology is , while the indiscrete topology is . Both satisfy the axioms. They describe different topological spaces on the same set: the first is Hausdorff and disconnected, while the second is connected and not Hausdorff. Each is compact because is a finite set.
The identity function is a continuous map: the only target open sets have inverse images and . Its inverse is not a continuous map, since the target open set has inverse image , which is not an open set in . Thus even a continuous bijection need not be a homeomorphism.