Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2017 / ia / Paper 2 / 11F / b / Solution

Let $C_{12}=\mathbb{E}[S_1{S}_2]\ge 0$, using the supplied correlation property of the Curie–Weiss model. Since $1_{\{S_i=1\}}=(1+S_i)/2$ and each spin has zero expected value,Divide by $\mathbb{P}(S_1=1)=1/2$ to obtainThe expression assumes $n\ge 2$, as required for $S_2$ to exist. It makes the connection between the spin correlation and the requested conditional probability explicit.