Department of Mathematics Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Problem Sheet 10
Department of Mathematics Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Problem Sheet 10
Department of Mathematics Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Problem Sheet 10
1. Consider the experiment of tossing a coin repeatedly. Let 0 < p < 1 be the probability of head in
a single trial. Check whether the following processes are Markov processes or not. If they are, then
find the state transition probabilities and draw the state transition probability diagram. Also, find the
initial distribution. Find the communicating classes and classify the states according to transient and
recurrent states.
(a) For all n ∈ N, let Xn = 1 if the nth trial gives a head, Xn = 0 otherwise.
(b) For all n ∈ N, let Yn be the number of heads in the first n trials.
(c) For all n ∈ N, let Zn = 1 if both the (n − 1)th and nth trial result in heads, Zn = 0 otherwise.
(d) For all n ∈ N, let Un be the number of heads minus the number of tails in the first n trials.
(e) For all n ∈ N, let Vn be the number of tails which occurred after the last head in the first n trials.
2. Suppose that {Xn , n ≥ 0} is a stochastic process on S (state space) which is of the form Xn =
f (Xn−1 , Yn ), n ≥ 1, where f : S × S 0 → S and Y1 , Y2 , . . . are IID random variables with values in
S 0 that are independent of X0 . Then show that {Xn } is a Markov chain with transition probabilities
pij = P {f (i, Y1 ) = j}.