# Note(1)--Basic Review of Basic Probability

Posted by Gwan Siu on January 30, 2018

The reference materials are based on cmu 10-705,2016 and 2017.

In note(1), we just review some necessary basic probability knowledge.

#### 1. Axioms of Probability

• $\mathbb{P}(A)\geq 0$
• $\mathbb{P}(\Omega)=0$
• If $A$ and $B$ are disjoint, then $\mathbb{P}(A\cup B)=\mathbb(P)(A)+\mathbb{P}(B)$

#### 2. Random Variable.

##### 2.1 The Definition of Random Variable

Let $\Omega$ be a smaple space(a set of posible events) with a probability distribution(also called a probability measure $\mathbb{P}$). A random variable is a mapping function: $X:\Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$. We wirte:

\begin{align} \mathbb{P}(X\in A)=\mathbb{P}({\omega \in \Omega: X(\omega)\in A}) \end{align}

and we can write $X\sim P$ that means $X$ has a distribution $P$.

##### 2.5 Cumulative distribution

The cumulative distribution function($cdf$) of $X$ is

\begin{align} F_{X}(x)=F(x)=\mathbb{P}(X\leq x) \end{align} The property of cdf:

1. $F$ is right-continuous function. At each point $x$, we have $F(x)=\lim_{n\rightarrow}\infty F(y_{n})=F(x)$ for any sequence $y_{n}\rightarrow x$ with $y_{n} >x$.
1. $F$ is non-decreasing. If $x<y$ then $F(x)\leq F(y)$.
1. $F$ is normalized. $\lim_{n\rightarrow -\infty}F(x)=0$ and $\lim_{x\rightarrow \infty}F(x)=1$.

Conversely, any $F$ satisfying these three properties is a cdf for some random variable.

If $X$ is discrete, its probability mass function($pmf$) is:

\begin{align} p_{X}(x)=p(x)=\mathbb{P}(X=x) \end{align}

If $X$ is continuous, then its probability density function($pdf$) satisfies:

\begin{align} \mathbb{P}(X\in A)=\int_{A}p_{X}(x)dx=\int_{A}p(x)dx \end{align} and the $p_{X}(x)=p(x)=F^{‘}(x)$. The following are all equivalent: $X\sim P,X\sim F, X\sim p$

Definition:Suppose that $X\sim P$ and $Y\sim Q$. We say that $X$ and $Y$ have the same distribution if $\mathbb{P}(X\in A)=Q(Y\in A)$ for all $A$. In that case we say that $X$ and $Y$ are equal in distribution and we write $X、overset{d}{=}Y$}

Lemma 1.1: $X\overset{d}{=}Y$ if and only if $F_{X}(t)=F_{Y}(t)$ for all $t$.

#### 3. Expectation, Variance and Generated Function

##### 3.1 Expetation and Its Properties.

The mean or expected value of $g(X)$ is

\begin{align} \mathbb{E}(g(X)) = \int g(x)dF(x)=\int g(x)dP(x) = \begin{cases} \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}g(x)p(x)dx\text{, if }X\text{ is continuous.}\\ \sum_{j}g(x_{j})p(x_{j})\text{ if }X\text{ is discrete.} \end{cases} \end{align}

Properties of expected value:

1. Linearity of Expectation: $\mathbb{E}(\sum_{j=1}^{k}c_{j}g_{j}(X))=\sum_{j=1}^{k}c_{j}\mathbb{E}(g_{j}(X))$.
1. If $X_{1},…,X_{n}$ are independent then
• \begin{align} \mathbb{E}(\prod_{i=1}^{n}X_{i})=\prod_{i=1}^{n}\mathbb{E}(X_{i}) \end{align}
1. $\mu$ is often used to denote $\mathbb{E}(X)$.

Roughly, Expectation is a linear operator. More insight, Expectation is weight average from the mathematics perspective.

##### 3.2 Variance and Its Properties

The defintion of Variance is: $\text{Var}(X)=\mathbb{E}[(X-\mu)^{2}]$ or $\text{Var}(X)=\mathbb{E}(X^{2})-(E[X])^{2}$. It’s sum of distances between each point and the mean. Physically, it describes the degree of difussion of points.

If $X_{1},…,X_{n}$ are independent then

\begin{align} \text{Var}(\sum_{i=1}^{n}a_{i}X_{i})=\sum_{i}a^{2}_{i}\text{Var}(X_{i}) \end{align}

The covariance is

\begin{align} \text{Cov}(X,Y)=\mathbb{E}[(X-\mu_{x})(Y-\mu_{y})]=\mathbb{E}(XY)-\mu_{X}\mu_{Y} \end{align} and the correlation is $\rho_{X,Y} =\text{Cov}(X,Y)/\sigma_{x}\sigma_{y}$. Recall that $-1\leq\rho \geq 1$.

Proof: $\text{Cov}(X,Y)=\mathbb{E}(XY)-\mu_{X}\mu_{Y}$.

\begin{align} Cov(X,Y) &= \mathbb{E}[(X-\mu_{X})(Y-\mu_{Y})] \\ &= \mathbb{E}[XY-X\mu_{Y}-Y\mu_{X}-\mu_{X}\mu_{Y}] \\ &=\mathbb{E}[XY]-\mu_{X}\mu_{Y} \end{align}

Proof: $-1\leq \rho_{X,Y} \leq 1$.(Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality)

\begin{align} \arrowvert \rho_{X,Y}\arrowvert &= \arrowvert \frac{\text{Cov}(X,Y)}{\sigma_{X}\sigma_{Y}}\arrowvert \\ &=\arrowvert \frac{E[(X-\mu_{X})(Y-\mu_{Y})]}{\sigma_{X}\sigma_{Y}} \arrowvert\\ &\leq \arrowvert \frac{E[(X-\mu_{X})]}{\sigma_{X}} \arrowvert \arrowvert \frac{E[(Y-\mu_{Y})]}{\sigma_{Y}}\arrowvert \\ &\leq \arrowvert \frac{E[(X-\mu_{X})^{2}]}{\sigma_{X}^{2}} \arrowvert \arrowvert \frac{E[(Y-\mu_{Y})^{2}]}{\sigma_{Y}^{2}}\arrowvert \text{,Convex}\\ &= 1 \end{align}
##### 3.3 Conditional Expectation and Variance

The conditional expectation of $Y$ given $X$ is the random variable $\mathbb{E}(Y\arrowvert X)$ whose value, when $X=x$ is

\begin{align} \mathbb{E}(Y\arrowvert X=x)=\int_{y}p(y\arrowvert x)dy \end{align}

where $p(y\arrowvert x)=p(x,y)/p(x)$.

The Law of Total Expectation or Law of Iterated Expectation:

\begin{align} \mathbb{E}(Y)\mathbb{E}[\mathbb{E}[Y|X]]=\int \mathbb{E}(Y|X=x)p_{X}(x)dx \end{align}

The Law of Total Variance is

\begin{align} \text{Var}(Y)=\text{Var}[E[Y|X]]+\mathbb{E}[\text{Var}(Y|X)] \end{align}
##### 3.4 Moment Generated Function

The mement generated function(mgf) is

\begin{align} M_{X}(t)=\mathbb{E}[E^{tX}] \end{align}

If $M_{X}(t)=M_{Y}(t)$ for all $t$ in an interval around 0 then $X\overset{d}{=}Y$.

The moment generated function can be used to “generate” all the moments of a distribution, i.e. we can take derivatives of the mgf with respect to $t$ and evaluated at $t=0$, i.i. we have that

\begin{align} M_{X}^{n}(t)\arrowvert_{t=0}=\mathbb{E}(X^{n}) \end{align}
##### 4. Independence

(Definition): $X$ and $Y$ are independent if and only if

\begin{align} \mathbb{E}(X\in A, Y\in B) = \mathbb{P}(X\in A)\mathbb{Y\in B} \end{align}

for all $A$ and $B$.

Theorem 1.2 Let $(X,Y)$ be a bivariate random vector with $p_{X,Y}(x,y)$. $X$ and $Y$ are independent iff $p_{X,Y}=(x,y)=p_{X}(x)p_{Y}(y)$.

$X_{1},…,X_{n}$ are independent if and only if

\begin{align} \mathbb{P}(X_{1}\in A_{1},..., X_{n}\in A_{n}) =\prod_{i=1}^{n}\mathbb{P}(X_{i}\in A_{i}) \end{align}

Thus, $p_{x_{1},…,x_{n}}=\prod_{i=1}^{n}p_{X_{i}}(x_{i})$.

If $X_{1},…,X_{n}$ are independent and identically distributed we say they are iid and we write

$X_{1},...,X_{n}\sim P \text{ or }X_{1},...,X_{n}\sim F \text{ or } X_{1},...,X_{n} \sim p$
 Independence and condition: A and B are independent events then  $P(A B)=P(A)$ Also, for any pair of events A and B.
\begin{align} P(AB)=P(A\arrowvert B)P(B)=P(B\arrowvert A)P(A) \end{align}

Independece means that knowing B does not change the probability of A.

##### 5.Transformations

Let $Y=g(X)$ where: $g:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$. Then

\begin{align} F_{Y}(y) = \mathbb{P}(Y\leq y)=\mathbb{P}(g(X)\leq y)=\int_{A(y)}p_{X}(x)dx \end{align} where $A_{y}={x:g(x)\leq y}$.

The density is $p_{Y}(y)=F^{}_{Y}(y)$. If $g$ is monotonic, then

\begin{align} p_{Y}(y)=p_{X}(h(y))\arrowvert \frac{dh(y)}{dy}\arrowvert \end{align} where $h=g^{-1}$.

Let $Z=g(X,Y)$. For example, $Z=X+Y$ or $Z=X/Y$. Then we find the pdf of $Z$ as follows:

1. For each $z$, find that set $A_{z}={(x,y):g(x,y)\leq z}$.
• Find the CDF: \begin{align} F_{Z}(z)P(Z\leq z)=P(g(X,Y)\leq z)=P({(x,y):g(x,y)\leq z}) = \int \int_{A_{z}}p_{X,Y}(x,y)dxdy \end{align}
• 3.The pdf is $p_{Z}(z)=F^{}_{Z}(z)$.

#### 6. Important Distributions

##### 6.1 Bernoulli Distribution

$X\sim \text{Bernoulli}(\theta)$ if $\mathbb{P}(X=1)=\theta$ and $\mathbb{P}(X=0)=1-\theta$ and hence

$p(x)=\theta^{x}(1-\theta)^{1-x}, \text{ }x=0,1$

Mean: $\mu_{theta}=\mathbb{E}[\theta]=theta$.
Variance: $\text{Var}(theta) = \mathbb{E}[(\theta-\mu_{theta})^{2}]=\theta(1-\theta)$

##### 6.2 Binomial Distribution

$X\sim \text{Binomial}(\theta)$ if

\begin{align} p(x)=\mathbb{P}(X=x)=\binom{n}{x} \theta^{x}(1-\theta)^{n-x}, \text{ }x\in {0,...,n} \end{align}

Mean: $\mu_{\theta}=n\theta$.
Variance: $\text{Var}(\theta)=n\theta(1-\theta)$. (Indicated function is used to prove the mean and variance.)

##### 6.3 Multinomial Distribution

The miltivariate version of a Binomial distribution is called a Multinomial distribution. Consider drawing a ball from an urn with has balls with $k$ different colors labeled “Color 1, color 2,…, color k.” Let $p=(p_{1},p_{2},…,p_{k})$ where $\sum_{j=1}^{n}p_{j}=1$ and $p_{j}$ is the probability of frawing color $j$. Draw $n$ balls from the urn(independently and with replacement) and let $X=(X_{1},…,X_{k})$ be the count of the number of balls of each color drawn. We say that $X$ has a Multinomial(n,p) distribution. Then,

\begin{align} p(x)=\binom{n}{x_{1},...,x_{n}}p_{1}^{x_{1}}...p_{k}^{x_{k}} \end{align}

Mean: $\mathbb{E}[X_{i}]=np_{i}$
Variance: $\text{Var}(X_{i})=np_{i}(1-p_{i})$

##### 6.4 Chi-squared Distribution

$X\sim \chi^{2}{p}$ if $X=\sum{j=1}^{n}Z_{j}^{2}$ where $Z_{1},…,Z_{n}\sim N(0,1)$. The pdf of $\chi$ is:

\begin{align} f(n,x)=\frac{x^{k/2-1}e^{-x/2}}{2^{k/2}\Gamma(k/2)} \end{align}

The mean: $\mu=n$, and the variance: $\text{Var}(\chi)=2n$. n is the degree of freedom.

The cdf of $\chi$:

\begin{align} F(n,x)=\frac{1}{\Gamma(k/2)}\gamma(\frac{k}{2},\frac{x}{2}) \end{align}

Non-centeral chi-squared(More on this below). $X\sim \chi_{1}^{2}(\mu^{2})$ if $X=Z^{2}$ where $Z\sim N(\mu,1)$.

##### 6.5 Gamma Distribution

$X\sim \Gamma(\alpha, \beta)$ if

$p_{X}(x) = \frac{1}{\Gamma(\alpha)\beta^{\alpha}}x^{\alpha-1}e^{-x/\beta}$

for $x>0$ where $\Gamma(\alpha)=\int_{0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{\beta^{\alpha}}x^{\alpha-1}e^{-x/\beta}$.

##### 6.6 Gaussian Distribution(Normal Distribution)

$X\sim N(\mu,\sigma^{2})$ if

\begin{align} p(x)=\frac{1}{\sigma\sqrt{2\pi}}e^{-\frac{(x-\mu)^{2}}{2\sigma^{2}}} \end{align}

If $X\in \mathbb{R}^{d}$ then $X\sim N(\mu,\Sigma)$ if

\begin{align} p(x) = \frac{1}{(2\pi)^{d/2}|\Sigma|}\text{exp}(-\frac{1}{2}(x-\mu)^{T}\Sigma^{-1}(x-\mu)) \end{align} where $\mathbb{E}[Y]=\mu$ and $\text{cov}[Y]=\Sigma$. The moment generating function is

$M(t)=\text{exp}(\mu^{T}t+\frac{t^{T}\Sigma t}{2})$

Theorem (a). If $Y\sim N(\mu,\Sigma)$, then $\mathbb{E}[Y]=\mu,\text{cov}(Y)=\Sigma$.
(b). If $Y\sim N(\mu,\Sigma)$ and $c$ is a scalar, then $cY\sim N(c\mu,c^{2}\Sigma)$.

Theorem Suppose that $Y\sim N(\mu,\Sigma)$. Let
\begin{align} Y=\begin{pmatrix} Y_{1} \\ Y_{2} \\ \end{pmatrix}, \mu = \begin{pmatrix} \mu_{1} \\ \mu_{2} \\ \end{pmatrix}, \Sigma = \begin{pmatrix} \Sigma_{11} & \Sigma_{12} \\ \Sigma_{21} & \Sigma_{22} \\ \end{pmatrix} \end{align}

where $Y_{1}$ and $\mu_{1}$ are $p\times 1$, and $\Sigma_{11}$ is $p\times p$.
(a). $Y_{1}\sim N_{p}(\mu_{1},\Sigma_{11}),Y_{2}\sim N_{n-p}(\mu_{2},\Sigma_{22})$
(b). $Y_{1}$ and $Y_{2}$ are independent if and only if $\Sigma_{12}=0$.
(c). If $\Sigma_{22}> 0$, then the condition distribution of $Y_{1}$ given $Y_{2}$ is

$Y_{1}|Y_{2}\sim N_{p}(\mu_{1}+\Sigma_{12}\Sigma_{22}^{-1}(Y_{2}-\mu_{2}), \Sigma_{11}-\Sigma_{12}\Sigma_{22}^{-1}\Sigma_{21})$

Lemma: Let $Y\sim N(\mu,\sigma^{2}I)$, where $Y^{T}=(Y_{1},…,Y_{n}),\mu^{T}=(\mu_{1},…,\mu_{n})$ and $\sigma^{2}>0$ is a scalar. Then the $Y_{i}$ are independent, $Y_{i}\sim N_{1}(\mu,\sigma^{2})$ and

$\frac{\Vert Y\Vert^{2}}{\sigma^{2}}=\frac{Y^{T}Y}{\sigma^{2}}\sim \chi^{2}_{n}(\frac{\mu^{T}\mu}{\sigma^{2}})$

Theorem Let $Y\sim N(\mu,\Sigma)$. Then:
(a). $Y^{T}\Sigma^{-1}Y\sim \chi_{n}^{2}(\mu^{T}\Sigma^{-1}\mu)$.
(b). $(Y-\mu)^{T}\Sigma^{-1}(Y-\mu)\sim \mu$. (c). $(Y-\mu)^{T}\Sigma^{-1}(Y-\mu)\sim \chi_{n}^{2}(0)$.

#### 7. Sample Mean and Variance

Let $X_{1},…,X_{n}\sim P$. The sample mean is

$\hat{\mu_{n}}=\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i}X_{i}$

and the sample variance is

$\hat{\sigma_{n}^{2}}=\frac{1}{n-1}\sum_{i}(X_{i}-\hat{\mu}_{n})^{2}.$

The sampling distribution of $\hat{\mu}_{n}$ is

$G_{n}(t)=\mathbb{P}(\hat{\mu}_{n}\leq t)$

Pratics Problem. Let $X_{1},..,X_{n}$ be iid with $\mu=\mathbb{E}(X_{i})=\mu$ and $\sigma^{2}=\text{Var}(X_{i})=\sigma^{2}$. Then

$\mathbb{E}(\hat{\mu})=\mu,\text{Var}(\hat{\mu})=\frac{\sigma^{2}}{n},\mathbb{E}(\hat{\sigma}^{2}_{n})=\sigma^{2}$

Theorem If $X_{1},…,X_{n}\sim N(\mu,\sigma^{2})$ then
(a). $\hat{\mu}{n}\sim N(\mu,\frac{\sigma^{2}}{n})$.
(b). $\frac{(n-1)\hat{\sigma}^{2} {n}}{\sigma^{2}}\sim \chi^{2}{n-1}$
(c). $\hat{\mu} {n}$ and $\hat{\sigma}_{n}^{2}$ are independent.

Proof: $\mathbb{E}[\hat{\mu}]=\mu$\

\begin{align} \mathbb{E}[\hat{\mu}_{n}] &=\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i}\mathbb{E}[X_{i}] \\ &=\frac{1}{n}n\mu \\ &=\mu \end{align}

Proof: $\mathbb{E}[\hat{\sigma}^{2}]=\sigma^{2}$.

\begin{align} \mathbb{E}[\hat{\sigma}^{2}] &=\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}\mathbb{E}[(X_{i}-\hat{\mu})^{2}] \\ &= \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}\mathbb{E}[(X_{i}-\mu+\mu-\hat{\mu})^{2}] \\ &= \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}\mathbb{E}[(X_{i}-\mu)^{2}+2(X_{i}-\mu)(\mu-\hat{\mu})+(\mu-\hat{\mu})^{2}] \\ &= \frac{1}{n}\mathbb{E}[\sum_{i=1}^{n}(X_{i}-\mu)^{2}]+2n(\hat{\mu}-\mu)^{2}+n(\mu-\hat{\mu})^{2} \\ &=\frac{1}{n}[\text{Var}(X)-n\text{Var}(\hat{\mu})] \\ & = \sigma^{2}-\frac{\sigma^{2}}{n} \\ & = \frac{n-1}{n}\sigma^{2} \end{align}

#### 8. Bayesian Theorem

Let $A_{1},…,A_{k}$ be a partition of $\Omega$ such that $P(A_{i})>0$ for all $i$. If $P(B)>0$, then for each $i=1,…,k$:

\begin{align} P(A_{i}\arrowvert B)=\frac{P(B\arrowvert A_{i})P(A_{i})}{\sum_{j}P(B\arrowvert A_{j})P(A_{j})} \end{align}

Total Probability Let $A_{1},…,A_{k}$ be a partition of $\Omega$. Then, for any evernt $B$,

$P(B)=\sum_{i=1}^{k}P(B\arrowvert A_{i})P(A_{i})$