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In probability, a singular distribution is a probability distribution concentrated on a set of Lebesgue measure zero, where the probability of each point in that set is zero [1] .
These distributions are sometimes called singular continuous distributions, since their cumulative distribution functions are singular and continuous [1] .
Such distributions are not absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure.
A singular distribution is not a discrete probability distribution because each discrete point has a zero probability. On the other hand, neither does it have a probability density function, since the Lebesgue integral of any such function would be zero.
In general, distributions can be described as a discrete distribution (with a probability mass function), an absolutely continuous distribution (with a probability density), a singular distribution (with neither), or can be decomposed into a mixture of these [1] .
An example is the Cantor distribution; its cumulative distribution function is a devil's staircase. Less curious examples appear in higher dimensions. For example, the upper and lower Fréchet–Hoeffding bounds are singular distributions in two dimensions.
In probability theory, the expected value is a generalization of the weighted average. Informally, the expected value is the arithmetic mean of the possible values a random variable can take, weighted by the probability of those outcomes. Since it is obtained through arithmetic, the expected value sometimes may not even be included in the sample data set; it is not the value you would "expect" to get in reality.
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 expressing it through a set of axioms. Typically these axioms formalise probability in terms of a probability space, which assigns a measure taking values between 0 and 1, termed the probability measure, to a set of outcomes called the sample space. Any specified subset of the sample space is called an event.
In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample space and the probabilities of events.
A random variable is a mathematical formalization of a quantity or object which depends on random events. The term 'random variable' in its mathematical definition refers to neither randomness nor variability but instead is a mathematical function in which
In probability theory, a probability density function (PDF), density function, or density of an absolutely continuous random variable, is a function whose value at any given sample in the sample space can be interpreted as providing a relative likelihood that the value of the random variable would be equal to that sample. Probability density is the probability per unit length, in other words, while the absolute likelihood for a continuous random variable to take on any particular value is 0, the value of the PDF at two different samples can be used to infer, in any particular draw of the random variable, how much more likely it is that the random variable would be close to one sample compared to the other sample.
In mathematics, a real-valued function f on the interval [a, b] is said to be singular if it has the following properties:
In probability and statistics, a probability mass function is a function that gives the probability that a discrete random variable is exactly equal to some value. Sometimes it is also known as the discrete probability density function. The probability mass function is often the primary means of defining a discrete probability distribution, and such functions exist for either scalar or multivariate random variables whose domain is discrete.
In calculus and real analysis, absolute continuity is a smoothness property of functions that is stronger than continuity and uniform continuity. The notion of absolute continuity allows one to obtain generalizations of the relationship between the two central operations of calculus—differentiation and integration. This relationship is commonly characterized in the framework of Riemann integration, but with absolute continuity it may be formulated in terms of Lebesgue integration. For real-valued functions on the real line, two interrelated notions appear: absolute continuity of functions and absolute continuity of measures. These two notions are generalized in different directions. The usual derivative of a function is related to the Radon–Nikodym derivative, or density, of a measure. We have the following chains of inclusions for functions over a compact subset of the real line:
In mathematics, the Cantor function is an example of a function that is continuous, but not absolutely continuous. It is a notorious counterexample in analysis, because it challenges naive intuitions about continuity, derivative, and measure. Though it is continuous everywhere and has zero derivative almost everywhere, its value still goes from 0 to 1 as its argument reaches from 0 to 1. Thus, in one sense the function seems very much like a constant one which cannot grow, and in another, it does indeed monotonically grow.
In mathematics, the Radon–Nikodym theorem is a result in measure theory that expresses the relationship between two measures defined on the same measurable space. A measure is a set function that assigns a consistent magnitude to the measurable subsets of a measurable space. Examples of a measure include area and volume, where the subsets are sets of points; or the probability of an event, which is a subset of possible outcomes within a wider probability space.
In mathematics, the support of a real-valued function is the subset of the function domain containing the elements which are not mapped to zero. If the domain of is a topological space, then the support of is instead defined as the smallest closed set containing all points not mapped to zero. This concept is used widely in mathematical analysis.
The Cantor distribution is the probability distribution whose cumulative distribution function is the Cantor function.
In quantum mechanics, a probability amplitude is a complex number used for describing the behaviour of systems. The square of the modulus of this quantity represents a probability density.
Given two random variables that are defined on the same probability space, the joint probability distribution is the corresponding probability distribution on all possible pairs of outputs. The joint distribution can just as well be considered for any given number of random variables. The joint distribution encodes the marginal distributions, i.e. the distributions of each of the individual random variables and the conditional probability distributions, which deal with how the outputs of one random variable are distributed when given information on the outputs of the other random variable(s).
In mathematics, a Dirac measure assigns a size to a set based solely on whether it contains a fixed element x or not. It is one way of formalizing the idea of the Dirac delta function, an important tool in physics and other technical fields.
In mathematics, two positive measures and defined on a measurable space are called singular if there exist two disjoint measurable sets whose union is such that is zero on all measurable subsets of while is zero on all measurable subsets of This is denoted by
In mathematics, more precisely in measure theory, Lebesgue's decomposition theorem states that for every two σ-finite signed measures and on a measurable space there exist two σ-finite signed measures and such that:
In probability theory, random element is a generalization of the concept of random variable to more complicated spaces than the simple real line. The concept was introduced by Maurice Fréchet who commented that the “development of probability theory and expansion of area of its applications have led to necessity to pass from schemes where (random) outcomes of experiments can be described by number or a finite set of numbers, to schemes where outcomes of experiments represent, for example, vectors, functions, processes, fields, series, transformations, and also sets or collections of sets.”
In mathematics, more precisely in measure theory, a measure on the real line is called a discrete measure if it is concentrated on an at most countable set. The support need not be a discrete set. Geometrically, a discrete measure is a collection of point masses.
In probability theory and statistics, the law of the unconscious statistician, or LOTUS, is a theorem which expresses the expected value of a function g(X) of a random variable X in terms of g and the probability distribution of X.
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