Bernoulli shift Created 2026-09-29 Updated 2026-10-03
On a one-sided sequence space with product measure, the Bernoulli shift is
It preserves the product measure. Every invariant event lies in the tail sigma-algebra of the coordinate process, so the Kolmogorov zero-one law makes the shift an ergodic transformation.
The tail sigma-algebra is
Its events depend only on arbitrarily late coordinates. The Kolmogorov zero-one law states that for a sequence of independent random variables, every tail event has probability zero or one:
Identical probability distributions and integrability are not required for the Kolmogorov zero-one law.
The sigma-algebras decrease with , and (b) gives . The permitted reverse martingale convergence theorem therefore gives an integrable random variable such that almost surely and with convergence in L1. In particular,
It remains to prove that is constant. We must not assume that is the tail sigma-algebra of the ; instead use tail measurability of limits of sample averages directly. Define the random variable valued in the extended real numbers . For every fixed ,
because pointwise. Thus is measurable with respect to for every , and hence to the tail sigma-algebra. Also almost surely.
By the Kolmogorov zero-one law, each tail event , for a rational number , has probability zero or one. Since is finite almost surely, its distribution function can only be that of a constant : taking and using the density of the rational numbers gives almost surely. Its expected value identifies . This proves the strong law of large numbers:
The Kolmogorov zero-one law says that for independent random variables , every event in the tail sigma-algebra
has probability zero or one.
In the canonical model of an independent and identically distributed sequence, the sample space is a sequence space with the product law, is the th coordinate, and the left Bernoulli shift satisfies . If is shift-invariant, then for every ,
so . The zero-one law therefore says that the canonical one-sided i.i.d. shift is ergodic.
Yes. Let be -invariant. Since the itinerary variables generate modulo null sets, can be regarded as an event in the canonical sequence model. For every , invariance and imply
Thus belongs to the tail sigma-algebra of the i.i.d. sequence . By the Kolmogorov zero-one law, is zero or one. Hence the tent map is an ergodic measure-preserving transformation.
Let be independent random variables and let
be their tail sigma-algebra. The Kolmogorov zero-one law states that every has probability zero or one.
Indeed, is independent of for every . The union of these finite-coordinate sigma-algebras generates , and independence extended from generating pi-systems shows that is independent of that entire sigma-algebra. Since itself belongs to it,
so .
Tail event Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
A tail event is measurable with respect to a tail sigma-algebra, so changing finitely many coordinates does not affect whether it occurs.
For a sequence of finite real random variables, is measurable with respect to its tail sigma-algebra: deleting finitely many summands changes each sample mean by a quantity tending to zero. When the random variables are independent random variables, the Kolmogorov zero-one law makes every finite such limit constant almost surely.