Sunday, 12 July 2015

probability - Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for a CDF

This is an attempt to prove Theorem 1.5.3. in Casella and Berger. Note that the only things that have been proven are really basic set-theory with P (a probability measure) theorems (e.g., addition rule). Recall for a random variable X, we define FX(x)=P(Xx).




Theorem. F is a CDF iff:





  1. lim

  2. \lim\limits_{x \to +\infty}F(x) = 1

  3. F is nondecreasing.

  4. For all x_0 \in \mathbb{R}, \lim\limits_{x \to x_0^{+}} F(x)= F(x_0)




\Longrightarrow If F is a CDF of X, by definition,
F_{X}(x) = \mathbb{P}(X \leq x) = \mathbb{P}\left(\{s_j \in S: X(s_j) \leq x\} \right)

where S denotes the overall sample space.



(3) is easy to show. Suppose x_1 \leq x_2. Then notice
\{s_j \in S: X(s_j) \leq x_1\} \subset \{s_j \in S: X(s_j) \leq x_2\}
and therefore by a Theorem,
\mathbb{P}\left(\{s_j \in S: X(s_j) \leq x_1\}\right) \leq \mathbb{P}\left(\{s_j \in S: X(s_j) \leq x_2\}\right)
giving F_{X}(x_1) \leq F_{X}(x_2), hence F is nondecreasing.



I suppose (1) and (2) aren't consequences of anything more than saying that \{s_j \in S: X(s_j) \leq -\infty\} = \varnothing and \{s_j \in S: X(s_j) \leq +\infty\} = S (unless I'm completely wrong here). But this seems to suggest that \lim_{x \to -\infty}\mathbb{P}(\text{blah}(x)) = \mathbb{P}(\lim_{x \to -\infty}\text{blah}(x))
where \text{blah}(x) is a set dependent on x. At this point of the text, this hasn't been proven (if it's even true).




I'm not sure how to show (4).



\Longleftarrow I don't know how to prove sufficiency. Casella and Berger state that this is "much harder" than necessity, and we have to establish that there is a sample space, a probability measure, and a random variable defined on the sample space such that F is the CDF of this random variable, but this isn't enough detail for me to go on.

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