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  1. Let $X$ be a variable which has density $f_{X}$ and mean $E[X]=\mu$
  2. Define $B$, a Bernoulli variable, which has a probability $P(b_{i}=1)=p_{i}=\frac{1}{N^\gamma}$

Consider the following expression:

\begin{equation} \frac{\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}x_{i}}{\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}} \end{equation} This can be interpreted as a sampling procedure where the probability of being included in the sample is a Bernoulli draw. The above expression is therefore simply an average.

Is the following derivation correct: \begin{equation} \lim_{N \rightarrow \infty}\frac{\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}x_{i}}{\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}}=\frac{E[BX]}{E[B]}=\frac{E[E[BX|X]]}{E[B]}=\frac{E[\frac{1}{N^{\gamma}}X]}{E[\frac{1}{N^{\gamma}}]}=E[X] \end{equation} I am unsure whether this is correct because of the way the Bernouilli probability is specified: $p_{i}$ tends to zero as $N \rightarrow \infty$. But I do not see where this would invalidate the above derivation - although I have a feeling it might.

Any help is much appreciated.

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    $\begingroup$ The value of the exponent $\gamma$ appears important. Is it $\gamma \leq 1$ or $\gamma >1$? $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 13:19
  • $\begingroup$ Three of the four equations make no sense at all, because bound variables $i$ (which is meaningful only within the summations) and $N$ (which is meaningful only within the limit) pop in and out without any justification. So, whether or not the result is true, the derivation is invalid. BTW, it might help to recognize this ratio as the least squares estimate of the coefficient in the (zero-intercept) regression of $x_i$ against $b_i$ (at least when $\sum_{i=1}^N b_i \ne 0$). $\endgroup$
    – whuber
    Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 13:42
  • $\begingroup$ I have changed to notation a bit, which was probably confusing. $\endgroup$
    – Rita V
    Commented Aug 28, 2015 at 14:27

1 Answer 1

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A not irrelevant digression, to validate also my comment about $\gamma$: We are considering an expression where in the numerator we have the sum of Bernoulli random variables, i.e. dichotomous discrete random variables taking the values $\{0,1\}$. So we have to consider whether the event "sum of Bernoullis is zero" has strictly positive probability.

The probability that all draws will be zero is equal to

$$\Pr \left(\text{\{All b_i's are zero\}}\right) = \left(1-\frac {1}{N^{\gamma}}\right)^N$$

Then for example, if $\gamma =1$ we have

$$\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}\Pr \left(\text{\{All b_i's are zero\}}\right) = \lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}\left(1-\frac {1}{N}\right)^N = 1/e \approx 0.37$$

and a very high probability indeed. Informally you can check that if $\gamma >1$ the sum will have limiting probability of being zero equal to unity, while only if $\gamma<1$ the limiting probability of the sum being zero, will equal zero.

Another way to explore this is to remember that the sum of i.i.d Bernoullis is a Binomial random variable,

$$\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i} \sim \text{Bin}\big(\mu_n = N^{1-\gamma}, \sigma^2_n = N^{1-\gamma}-N^{1-2\gamma}\big)$$

If $\gamma <1$, as a comment indicated that it is the case of interest here, we avoid the case where the sum in the denominator takes the value zero, at the limit (because for finite $N$ this can still very well be the case). Assuming from here on that $\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i} \neq 0$, we can define

$$w_i = \frac {b_i}{\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}},\;\; \sum_i^N w_i = 1,\;\; \forall N$$

and the expression of interest becomes

$$\sum_{i=1}^N w_ix_i$$

which is a weighted average, and more importantly, a convex combination of the $x_i$'s, but with the weights being random variables. This is a rather advanced technical issue, that nevertheless has been studied. A bit informally, and exploiting the fact that the weights relate to Bernoullis, note that the values each weight can take are two,

$$w_i \in \left\{0, \frac 1{\sum_{i=1}^Nb_i}\right\}$$

We wonder whether

$$\sum_{i=1}^N w_ix_i - \frac 1N\sum_{i=1}^N x_i \xrightarrow{p}0 \;\;???$$

Denote $M$ the number of Bernoullis that take the value $1$. This means that $\sum_{i=1}^N b_i =M$.

Then we can write

$$\sum_{i=1}^N w_ix_i - \frac 1N\sum_{i=1}^N x_i = \sum_{w_i \neq 0}w_ix_i - \frac 1N\sum_{i=1}^N x_i $$

$$=\frac {1}{\sum_{i=1}^N b_i}\sum_{w_i \neq 0}x_i - \frac 1N\sum_{i=1}^N x_i$$

$$=\frac {1}{M}\sum_{w_i \neq 0}x_i - \frac 1N\sum_{i=1}^N x_i$$

Now $M$ is not a number but the Binomial random variable we described before. Still we have that $M\leq N$, and if $M\rightarrow \infty$ the two sums above will have the same probability limit, $\mu$, and the assertion of the question is verified. Intuitively, if, as $N$ becomes "very large", $M$ will tend to take very large values also, the first sum will behave like a proper sample average of the $x$'s.

So the condition we require is that

$$M=\sum_{i=1}^Nb_i \rightarrow \infty$$ By looking at its mean and variance, we see that as long as $\gamma <1$ it will diverge. So it appears that

$$\gamma <1 \implies \frac{\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}x_{i}}{\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}} \xrightarrow{p} \mu$$

A quick simulation supports this: I generated $50,000$ samples from a chi-square with $3$ degrees of freedom (so its expected value is $3$), and the same number of samples from a Bernoulli with $p = (50,000)^{-1/2}$ (so $\gamma = 1/2$ here). I then calculated the expression of interest and I obtained

$$\frac{\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}x_{i}}{\sum_{i=1}^{N}b_{i}} = 3.016$$

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you very much Alecos Papadopoulos! This has made things much clearer for me. $\endgroup$
    – Rita V
    Commented Aug 31, 2015 at 6:47
  • $\begingroup$ @RitaV You should upvote the answer and/or click the green mark, if it was helpful to you, otherwise your question remains in the ever-growing queue of "unanswered questions". $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 14, 2015 at 2:54

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