Paper 1, Section II,
Part II, 2015
(i) What does it mean to say that is a martingale?
(ii) If is an integrable random variable and , prove that is a martingale. [Standard facts about conditional expectation may be used without proof provided they are clearly stated.] When is it the case that the limit exists almost surely?
(iii) An urn contains initially one red ball and one blue ball. A ball is drawn at random and then returned to the urn with a new ball of the other colour. This process is repeated, adding one ball at each stage to the urn. If the number of red balls after draws and replacements is , and the number of blue balls is , show that is a martingale, where
Does this martingale converge almost surely?