Affine upper envelope 2026-10-06
For a bounded real function on a compact convex set, this envelope is the infimum of its continuous affine majorants. It is finite, concave and upper semicontinuous, and dominates the function. For continuous functions it describes the maximal integral among probability measures with a specified barycenter. Its homogeneity, subadditivity and affine-translation identities give the supporting measure lemma for affine upper envelopes.
Affine utility on probability measures Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
An affine utility on probability measures functional satisfies on mixtures of probability measures. Strict preferences are represented by comparing its real values, and indifference means equal values. This is cardinal utility on lotteries rather than merely an ordinal ordering of deterministic outcomes.
An approximate design is a probability measure on the design region, with weight specifying a proportion of observations at . For independent observations and common error variance , a linear regression with vector has normalized information matrix of an experimental design ; its least-squares estimator has covariance when the allocations realize these proportions. Exact designs restrict to integers.
Arbitrage Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
An arbitrage is an allowed self-financing portfolio with zero initial wealth, nonnegative terminal portfolio wealth almost surely under the physical probability measure , and strictly positive terminal wealth with positive probability. In a finite model where every state has positive probability, nonnegativity means no loss in any state. Positive expected return alone does not establish arbitrage: losses may still occur.
For the binomial market example, suppose the European call option sells for 13 while its replicating portfolio costs . Sell the call, buy its replicating portfolio, and lend the surplus in the bank account. The initial net cost is zero. At maturity the call obligation and portfolio cancel in either state, leaving . A price below permits the reversed construction, using short selling and borrowing. This is the law of one price made operational; the assumed trading permissions are essential.
Let have the fair Bernoulli distribution and set for every . Each coordinate has the same fair probability distribution as in the independent model, but the coordinates are dependent: , whereas the product of the marginal probabilities is . Every future sigma-algebra equals , so the tail sigma-algebra also equals .
The tail event of infinitely many heads is now exactly , with probability . For the finite-window events in infinitely many heads as a tail event,
The sample space can even be the same full Cartesian product in both models: the dependent probability measure assigns mass to each of the all-zero and all-one sequences. Then is the same literal tail event in both models. Only the probability measure and its independence properties change.
Figure 1.
More independent trials increase the chance of a head; repeated copies of one coin do not
. Exact constructed probabilities for at least one head in a window of coordinates. The independent curve is and tends to one; the shared-coin curve stays at . These are calculations from the two specified probability measures, not measurements or simulated frequencies. Details.
Barycenter 2026-10-06
The barycenter of a probability measure on a compact convex set is the point satisfying the displayed affine integral identities. It exists by approximating the measure by finitely supported measures and using compactness of their finite convex combinations. It is unique because continuous affine functions separate points. In a Banach-space setting it agrees with the appropriate vector integral when that integral is defined.
Barycenter of a measure on a Banach space Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
For a probability measure whose identity map is strongly measurable with integrable norm, its barycenter is the Bochner integral of that map. It is characterized by for every continuous linear functional. For a measure on a weakly compact set in a separable Banach space, its barycenter belongs to the norm-closed convex hull of that set.
Beckner's inequality 2026-10-14
For and , the noise operator on the Boolean hypercube satisfies for the uniform probability measure. In particular,
Here are Fourier-Walsh transform coefficients. The endpoint follows by averaging. This hypercontractive inequality on the Boolean hypercube controls Fourier-Walsh transform coefficients of discrete derivatives of a Boolean function and is a principal ingredient in the Kahn-Kalai-Linial theorem.
For a measurable event , applying Jensen inequality to separately on and its complement shows that the Kullback-Leibler divergence between two probability measures is at least the divergence between the two event indicators. This reduces a general probability measure comparison to a binary one and is the key step in a proof of Pinsker's inequality.
For every there is a positive integer such that every finite bipartite graph has an -regular pair of partitions with at most cells on each side.
To prove this, give the uniform probability measure, let be the indicator function of the edge set, and for partitions define their energy by
This conditional expectation is an orthogonal projection, so . If the partitions are not -regular, choose witnesses and in every irregular cell pair and refine each by all its and each by all its . The refined energy exceeds the old energy by
On the absolute value function of the mean of the difference is greater than , while this rectangle occupies at least an fraction of . The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality therefore contributes more than from that cell pair. Irregular pairs have total weight greater than , so every refinement raises the energy by more than . The process stops after at most refinements. If the current cell counts are , the construction gives at most new cells, so a finite iterated bound depending only on supplies .
Boole's inequality 2026-10-14
Boole's inequality, also called the union bound, bounds the probability that at least one of several events occurs by adding their individual probabilities. For a finite or countable family of events in the same probability space,
The union includes outcomes where several events occur together. There is no independence assumption: adding the individual probabilities counts such outcomes repeatedly, which can only make the sum larger. The cap at one uses the total mass of a probability measure. For infinitely many events, the sum is a nonnegative series, possibly infinite; an infinite sum gives only the bound one. This is countable subadditivity of a measure specialized to a probability measure. See Probability: Theory and Examples (fifth edition) by Rick Durrett (Section 1.1, Theorem 1.1.1(ii), printed p. 2).
For example, choose uniformly from the twelve outcomes , using the discrete uniform distribution. Put . If , these are disjoint events and their union has probability , exactly the union bound. If , the union has only six outcomes, so its exact probability is , although both individual probabilities are still and the bound is still . If , the exact probability falls to with the same bound. These examples isolate overlap in the union bound by keeping the individual probabilities fixed.
Figure 1.
The same individual event probabilities give different exact union probabilities as overlap increases
. Each panel is a fully specified discrete uniform distribution on twelve numbered outcomes. Blue means only, orange means only, purple means their intersection, and white means neither. The bottom bars compare the exact union probability with the sum of the individual probabilities. The three unions contain eight, six, and four outcomes; the sum counts eight in every panel. Details.
The union bound is useful when each event is easy to control but their joint behavior is difficult to determine. A short proof uses indicator functions: at every outcome,
Taking expected values and using linearity of expectation proves the finite bound.[ref] For a countable family, the finite unions increase to the full union; continuity of probability passes the finite inequalities to the limit. The closure of a sigma-algebra under countable unions ensures that this limiting union is an event. For the continuity of probability step, see Probability: Theory and Examples (fifth edition) by Rick Durrett (Section 1.1, Theorem 1.1.1(iii), printed p. 2).
Bounded-Lipschitz metric 2026-10-06
The bounded-Lipschitz metric tests probability measures against a uniformly bounded Lipschitz class. It metrizes weak convergence of probability measures on separable metric spaces. With a complete compatible base metric, it is complete on the probability measures of a Polish space. Replacing the sum norm by the maximum norm changes the metric only by uniform constant factors.
Cantor space Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
Cantor space is the binary sequence space with the product topology of discrete two-point factors. Here the Bernoulli-space synonym refers to this topology, without selecting a particular probability measure. The metric induces the topology. A diagonal subsequence argument gives compactness. Fixing a finite prefix gives a clopen cylinder set. The map is a homeomorphism to the usual Cantor set.
Average over . Multiplication by gives , with value zero at . This is at least when . Tonelli's theorem then gives the displayed bound for a probability measure with characteristic function . The bound converts control of the characteristic function near zero into tightness of probability measures and is useful in proving the Lévy continuity theorem.