Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 29 5 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let independent Bernoulli random variables have success probabilities , for , and use their natural filtration. DefineEach increment is integrable, finite, and independent of the previous filtration, with expectationThus is a martingale. The increments have no common finite bound, since a success produces a jump of size .
Since , the First Borel-Cantelli lemma says that only finitely many successes occur almost surely. Consequentlyfor all sufficiently large , with the random sum finite almost surely. Therefore almost surely, so neither finite convergence nor two-sided oscillation occurs. This rare-jump martingale divergence example gives probability zero, rather than one, for the union in (i).