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Exercise 0.26 (Properties of Stieltjes measure function)

Let (ℝ,ℬ,P) be the real probability space, and let F be the Stieltjes measure function associated with P. Show that

1.
F is non-decreasing.
2.
lim ⁡ t→−∞F(t) = 0 and lim ⁡ t→+∞F(t) = 1.
3.
F is right continuous, i.e., for all t ∈ ℝ we have F(t) = lim ⁡ s→t+F(s).

Answers

1.
If y ≥ x, then (−∞,x] ⊆ (−∞,y], so P ((−∞,x]) ≤ P ((−∞,x]) by the monotonicity property of the probability measure P (Exercise 23). Thus, we have F(x) ≤ F(y).
2.
By Exercise 9.3.1 of Analysis I we can replace the continuous lim ⁡ t→−∞F(t) by the convergence along any arbitrary sequence (tn)n∈ℕ in ℝ with tn ≥ t. (Without loss of generality, we can make the sequence monotone decreasing also by setting tn′ = ti such that ti is the first element with property ti ≥ tn−1′ and i > n − 1.) But then ((−∞,tn])n∈ℕ is a sequence of nested B-measurable sets and so we can use the downwards monotone convergence (Exercise 23) to deduce that lim ⁡ n→∞F(tn) = lim ⁡ n→∞P((−∞,tn]) = P (⋂ n=1∞E n) = P(∅) = 0

Similarly, by the upwards monotone convergence (Exercise 23) we see that

lim ⁡ n→∞F(tn) = lim ⁡ n→∞P((−∞,tn]) = P (⋃ n=1∞E n) = P(ℝ) = 1.

3.
Again, we use a monotone decreasing sequence (sn)n∈ℕ with sn ≥ t. We have two cases:
  • (sn)n∈ℕ eventually becomes t, in which case the theorem assertion follows obviously
  • We have eventually sn≠t for all n.

We inspect the latter case. By additivity of the probability measure combined with the downwards monotone convergence (Exercise 23) we obtain:

lim ⁡ n→∞F(sn) = lim ⁡ n→∞P ((−∞,sn]) = lim ⁡ n→∞P ((−∞,t]) + P ((t,sn]) = P ((−∞,t]) + lim ⁡ n→∞P ((t,sn]) = F(t) + P (⋂ n∈ℕ(t,sn]) = F(t) + P(∅) = F(t)

Remark 1. Note that this trick will not work with the left limits since

lim ⁡ n→∞F(sn) = lim ⁡ n→∞P ((−∞,sn]) = lim ⁡ n→∞P ((−∞,t]) − P ((sn,t]) = P ((−∞,t]) − lim ⁡ n→∞P ((sn,t]) = F(t) − P (⋂ n∈ℕ(sn,t]) = F(t) − P({t}).

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2021-08-02 00:00
Comments
  • You need to show the limit exists in part 2 before anything else. A lot of other solutions are either incorrect or incomplete.
    isn • 2023-08-20