Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2016 / ia / Paper 2 / 12F / c / Solution

The Chebyshev inequality states that for a random variable $Z$ with finite variance and $a>0$,Write ${\mu }_n=\mathbb{E}[T]$. The ratio in the hypothesis presupposes ${\mu }_n>0$ for all sufficiently large $n$. On the event $T=0$, the deviation from the mean equals ${\mu }_n$. Thus the Chebyshev inequality with $a={\mu }_n$ givesThis is the second moment method. It uses only the stipulated relative variance bound; no assumption that triangle indicators are independent is needed.