Conditional expectation
In probability theory, the conditional expectation, conditional expected value, or conditional mean of a random variable is its expected value evaluated with respect to the conditional probability distribution. If the random variable can take on only a finite number of values, the "conditions" are that the variable can only take on a subset of those values. More formally, in the case when the random variable is defined over a discrete probability space, the "conditions" are a partition of this probability space.
Depending on the context, the conditional expectation can be either a random variable or a function. The random variable is denoted analogously to conditional probability. The function form is either denoted or a separate function symbol such as is introduced with the meaning .
History[edit]
The related concept of conditional probability dates back at least to Laplace, who calculated conditional distributions. It was Andrey Kolmogorov who, in 1933, formalized it using the Radon–Nikodym theorem.[1] In works of Paul Halmos[2] and Joseph L. Doob[3] from 1953, conditional expectation was generalized to its modern definition using sub-σ-algebras.[4]
Definitions[edit]
Conditioning on an event[edit]
If A is an event in with nonzero probability, and X is a discrete random variable, the conditional expectation of X given A is
All the following formulas are to be understood in an almost sure sense. The σ-algebra could be replaced by a random variable , i.e. .
