Borel–Cantelli lemma

In probability theory, the Borel–Cantelli lemma is a theorem about sequences of events. In general, it is a
result in measure theory. It is named after Émile Borel and Francesco Paolo Cantelli, who gave statement to
the lemma in the first decades of the 20th century.[1][2] A related result, sometimes called the second Borel–
Cantelli lemma, is a partial converse of the first Borel–Cantelli lemma. The lemma states that, under
certain conditions, an event will have probability of either zero or one. Accordingly, it is the best-known of
a class of similar theorems, known as zero-one laws. Other examples include Kolmogorov's zero–one law
and the Hewitt–Savage zero–one law.

Statement of lemma for probability spaces

Let E1 ,E2 ,... be a sequence of events in some probability space. The Borel–Cantelli lemma states:[3][4]

Borel–Cantelli lemma — If the sum of the probabilities of the events {En } is finite

then the probability that infinitely many of them occur is 0, that is,

Here, "lim sup" denotes limit supremum of the sequence of events, and each event is a set of outcomes.
That is, lim sup En is the set of outcomes that occur infinitely many times within the infinite sequence of
events (En ). Explicitly,

The set lim sup En is sometimes denoted {En i.o. }, where "i.o." stands for "infinitely often". The theorem
therefore asserts that if the sum of the probabilities of the events En is finite, then the set of all outcomes that
are "repeated" infinitely many times must occur with probability zero. Note that no assumption of
independence is required.

Example
Suppose (Xn ) is a sequence of random variables with Pr(Xn = 0) = 1/n2 for each n. The probability that Xn
= 0 occurs for infinitely many n is equivalent to the probability of the intersection of infinitely many [Xn =
0] events. The intersection of infinitely many such events is a set of outcomes common to all of them.
However, the sum ΣPr(Xn = 0) converges to π 2 /6 ≈ 1.645 < ∞, and so the Borel–Cantelli Lemma states that
the set of outcomes that are common to infinitely many such events occurs with probability zero. Hence,
the probability of Xn = 0 occurring for infinitely many n is 0. Almost surely (i.e., with probability 1), Xn is
nonzero for all but finitely many n.

Proof
Let (En ) be a sequence of events in some probability space.

The sequence of events is non-increasing:

By continuity from above,

By subadditivity,

By original assumption, As the series converges,

as required.[5]

General measure spaces

For general measure spaces, the Borel–Cantelli lemma takes the following form:

Borel–Cantelli Lemma for measure spaces — Let μ be a (positive) measure on a set X,

with σ-algebra F, and let (An ) be a sequence in F. If
 then

Converse result
A related result, sometimes called the second Borel–Cantelli lemma, is a partial converse of the first
Borel–Cantelli lemma. The lemma states: If the events En are independent and the sum of the probabilities
of the En diverges to infinity, then the probability that infinitely many of them occur is 1. That is:[4]

Second Borel–Cantelli Lemma  —  If and the events are

independent, then

The assumption of independence can be weakened to pairwise independence, but in that case the proof is
more difficult.

The infinite monkey theorem follows from the Second lemma.

Example

The lemma can be applied to give a covering theorem in Rn . Specifically (Stein 1993, Lemma X.2.1), if Ej
is a collection of Lebesgue measurable subsets of a compact set in Rn such that

then there is a sequence Fj of translates

such that

apart from a set of measure zero.

Proof

Suppose that and the events are independent. It is sufficient to show the
event that the En 's did not occur for infinitely many values of n has probability 0. This is just to say that it is
sufficient to show that

Noting that:

it is enough to show: . Since the are independent:

The convergence test for infinite products guarantees that the product above is 0, if
diverges. This completes the proof.

Counterpart
Another related result is the so-called counterpart of the Borel–Cantelli lemma. It is a counterpart of the
Lemma in the sense that it gives a necessary and sufficient condition for the limsup to be 1 by replacing the
independence assumption by the completely different assumption that is monotone increasing for
sufficiently large indices. This Lemma says:

Let be such that , and let denote the complement of . Then the probability of
infinitely many occur (that is, at least one occurs) is one if and only if there exists a strictly
increasing sequence of positive integers such that
This simple result can be useful in problems such as for instance those involving hitting probabilities for
stochastic process with the choice of the sequence usually being the essence.

Kochen–Stone

Let be a sequence of events with and

Then there is a positive probability that occur infinitely often.

See also
Lévy's zero–one law
Kuratowski convergence
Infinite monkey theorem

References
1. E. Borel, "Les probabilités dénombrables et leurs applications arithmetiques" Rend. Circ.
Mat. Palermo (2) 27 (1909) pp. 247–271.
2. F.P. Cantelli, "Sulla probabilità come limite della frequenza", Atti Accad. Naz. Lincei 26:1
(1917) pp.39–45.
3. Klenke, Achim (2006). Probability Theory. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-1-84800-047-6.
4. Shiryaev, Albert N. (2016). Probability-1: Volume 1 (https://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-0-3
87-72206-1). Graduate Texts in Mathematics. Vol. 95. New York, NY: Springer New York.
doi:10.1007/978-0-387-72206-1 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-0-387-72206-1). ISBN 978-
0-387-72205-4.
5. "Romik, Dan. Probability Theory Lecture Notes, Fall 2009, UC Davis" (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20100614024007/http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~romik/teaching/lectures.pdf) (PDF).
Archived from the original (http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~romik/teaching/lectures.pdf) (PDF)
on 2010-06-14.

Prokhorov, A.V. (2001) [1994], "Borel–Cantelli lemma" (https://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/

index.php?title=Borel–Cantelli_lemma), Encyclopedia of Mathematics, EMS Press
Feller, William (1961), An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Application, John Wiley
& Sons.
Stein, Elias (1993), Harmonic analysis: Real-variable methods, orthogonality, and oscillatory
integrals, Princeton University Press.
Bruss, F. Thomas (1980), "A counterpart of the Borel Cantelli Lemma", J. Appl. Probab., 17:
1094–1101.
Durrett, Rick. "Probability: Theory and Examples." Duxbury advanced series, Third Edition,
Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2005.

External links
Planet Math Proof (https://web.archive.org/web/20081007200246/http://planetmath.org/ency
clopedia/BorelCantelliLemma.html) Refer for a simple proof of the Borel Cantelli Lemma
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