Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Oxford / 2015 / Prelims / Mathematics III / 4 / a

The events $B_1,B_2,\dots$ form a partition of a sample space $\Omega$ when they are pairwise disjoint sets and cover the whole sample space:Thus exactly one of these events occurs on every outcome. Under the usual set partition convention the parts are nonempty; empty parts can simply be discarded.

For an integrable random variable $X$, the law of total expectation for the partition of a sample space isParts of zero probability contribute zero and need no definition of $\mathbb{E}[X\mid B_i]$. To see the identity, write $X={\sum }_{i}X{1}_{B_i}$ and use linearity of expectation; integrability justifies the countable sum since ${\sum }_i\mathbb{E}[|X|1_{B_i}]=\mathbb{E}[|X|]<\infty$.