Paper 1, Section II, J

Probability and Measure | Part II, 2012

Carefully state and prove Jensen's inequality for a convex function c:IRc: I \rightarrow \mathbb{R}, where IRI \subseteq \mathbb{R} is an interval. Assuming that cc is strictly convex, give necessary and sufficient conditions for the inequality to be strict.

Let μ\mu be a Borel probability measure on R\mathbb{R}, and suppose μ\mu has a strictly positive probability density function f0f_{0} with respect to Lebesgue measure. Let P\mathcal{P} be the family of all strictly positive probability density functions ff on R\mathbb{R} with respect to Lebesgue measure such that log(f/f0)L1(μ)\log \left(f / f_{0}\right) \in L^{1}(\mu). Let XX be a random variable with distribution μ\mu. Prove that the mapping

fE[logff0(X)]f \mapsto \mathbb{E}\left[\log \frac{f}{f_{0}}(X)\right]

has a unique maximiser over P\mathcal{P}, attained when f=f0f=f_{0} almost everywhere.

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