Central limit theorem

Central limit theorems are a set of weak-convergence results in probability theory. Intuitively, they all express the fact that any sum of many independent identically distributed random variables is approximately normally distributed. These results explain the ubiquity of the normal distribution.

The most important and famous result is simply called The Central Limit Theorem; it is concerned with independent variables with identical distribution whose expected value and variance are finite. Several generalizations exist which do not require identical distribution but incorporate some condition which guarantees that none of the variables exert a much larger influence than the others. Two such conditions are the Lindeberg condition and the Lyapunov condition. Other generalizations even allow some "weak" dependence of the random variables.

The reader may find it helpful to consider this illustration of the central limit theorem.

"The" central limit theorem

Let X₁,X₂,X₃,... be a sequence of random variables which are defined on the same probability space, share the same probability distribution D and are independent. Assume that both the expected value μ and the standard deviation σ of D exist and are finite.

Consider the sum :S_n=X₁+...+X_n. Then the expected value of S_n is nμ and its standard deviation is σ n^½. Furthermore, informally speaking, the distribution of S_n approaches the normal distribution N(nμ,σ²n) as n approaches ∞.

In order to clarify the word "approaches" in the last sentence, we standardize S_n by setting

Then the distribution of Z_n converges towards the standard normal distribution N(0,1) as n approaches ∞ (this is convergence in distribution). This means: if Φ(z) is the cumulative distribution function of N(0,1), then for every real number z, we have

or, equivalently,

where

is the "sample mean".

Proof of the central limit theorem

For a theorem of such fundamental importance to statistics and applied probability, the central limit theorem has a remarkably simple proof using characteristic functions. It is similar to the proof of a (weak) law of large numbers. For any random variable, Y, with zero mean and unit variance (var(Y) = 1), the characteristic function of Y is, by Taylor's theorem,

Letting Y_i be (X_i − μ)/σ, the standardised value of X_i, it is easy to see that the standardised mean of the observations X₁, X₂, ..., X_n is just

By simple properties of characteristic functions, the characteristic function of Z_n is

But, this limit is just the characteristic function of a standard normal distribution, N(0,1), and the central limit theorem follows from the Lévy continuity theorem, which confirms that the convergence of characteristic functions implies convergence in distribution.

Convergence to the limit

If the third central moment E((X₁ − μ)³) exists and is finite, then the above convergence is uniform and the speed of convergence is at least on the order of 1/n^½ (see Berry-Esséen theorem).

Pictures of a distribution being "smoothed out" by summation (showing original distribution and three subseqent convolutions):

(See Illustration of the central limit theorem for further details on these images.)

An equivalent formulation of this limit theorem starts with A_n = (X₁ + ... + X_n) / n which can be interpreted as the mean of a random sample of size n. The expected value of A_n is μ and the standard deviation is σ / n^½. If we normalize A_n by setting Z_n = (A_n - μ) / (σ / n^½), we obtain the same variable Z_n as above, and it approaches a standard normal distribution.

Note the following apparent "paradox": by adding many independent identically distributed positive variables, one gets approximately a normal distribution. But for every normally distributed variable, the probability that it is negative is non-zero! How is it possible to get negative numbers from adding only positives? The reason is simple: the theorem applies to terms centered about the mean. Without that standardization, the distribution would, as intuition suggests, escape away to infinity.

Alternative statements of the theorem

The density of the sum of two or more independent variables is the convolution of their densities (if these densities exist). Thus the central limit theorem can be interpreted as a statement about the properties of density functions under convolution: the convolution of a number of density functions tends to the normal density as the number of density functions increases without bound, under the conditions stated above.

Since the characteristic function of a convolution is the product of the characteristic functions of the densities involved, the central limit theorem has yet another restatement: the product of the characteristic functions of a number of density functions tends to the characteristic function of the normal density as the number of density functions increases without bound, under the conditions stated above.

An equivalent statement can be made about Fourier transforms, since the characteristic function is essentially a Fourier transform.

Lyapunov condition

Let X_n be a sequence of independent random variables defined on the same probability space. Assume that X_n has finite expected value μ_n and finite standard deviation σ_n. We define

Assume that the third central moments

are finite for every n, and that

(This is the Lyapunov condition). We again consider the sum S_n=X₁+...+X_n. The expected value of S_n is m_n = ∑_i=1..nμ_i and its standard deviation is s_n. If we normalize S_n by setting

then the distribution of Z_n converges towards the standard normal distribution N(0,1) as above.

Lindeberg condition

In the same setting and with the same notation as above, we can replace the Lyapunov condition with the following weaker one: for every ε > 0

(where E( U : V > c) denotes the conditional expected value: the expected value of U given that V > c.) Then the distribution of the normalized sum Z_n converges towards the standard normal distribution N(0,1).

Non-independent case

There are some theorems which treat the case of sums of non-independent variables, for instance the m-dependent central limit theorem, the martingale central limit theorem and the central limit theorem for mixing processes.

track these down

External links

• Central Limit Theorem Java