Hsu–Robbins–Erdős Theorem
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

In the
mathematical Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
theory of probability Probability theory or probability calculus is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expre ...
, the Hsu–Robbins–Erdős theorem states that if X_1, \ldots ,X_n is a sequence of i.i.d.
random variable A random variable (also called random quantity, aleatory variable, or stochastic variable) is a Mathematics, mathematical formalization of a quantity or object which depends on randomness, random events. The term 'random variable' in its mathema ...
s with zero mean and finite variance and : S_n = X_1 + \cdots + X_n, \, then : \sum\limits_ P( , S_n , > \varepsilon n) < \infty for every \varepsilon > 0. The result was proved by Pao-Lu Hsu and
Herbert Robbins Herbert Ellis Robbins (January 12, 1915 – February 12, 2001) was an American mathematician and statistician. He did research in topology, measure theory, statistics, and a variety of other fields. He was the co-author, with Richard Courant ...
in 1947. This is an interesting strengthening of the classical strong
law of large numbers In probability theory, the law of large numbers is a mathematical law that states that the average of the results obtained from a large number of independent random samples converges to the true value, if it exists. More formally, the law o ...
in the direction of the
Borel–Cantelli lemma In probability theory, the Borel–Cantelli lemma is a theorem about sequences of events. In general, it is a result in measure theory. It is named after Émile Borel and Francesco Paolo Cantelli, who gave statement to the lemma in the first d ...
. The idea of such a result is probably due to Robbins, but the method of proof is vintage Hsu. Hsu and Robbins further conjectured in that the condition of finiteness of the variance of X is also a necessary condition for \sum\limits_ P(, S_n , > \varepsilon n) < \infty to hold. Two years later, the famed mathematician
Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, g ...
proved the conjecture. Since then, many authors extended this result in several directions.Hsu-Robbins theorem for the correlated sequences
/ref>


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hsu-Robbins-Erdos Theorem Theorems in measure theory Probabilistic inequalities