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Let $n \geq 1$ be an integer. Let $X \sim \operatorname{Beta}(i, n - i + 1)$ where $i \in \{1, ..., n\}$. Therefore:

$$ X = \frac{A_n}{A_n + B_n} $$ where

$$ A_n = \sum_{r = 1}^i Z_r, \qquad B_n = \sum_{r = i + 1}^{n + 1} Z_r $$ where $Z_r$ are i.i.d. $\operatorname{Exp}(1)$ random variables.

Why?

PS. This is from [^Arnold2008] in the proof of the theorem 8.5.1 page 223.

[^Arnold2008]: Arnold, B. C., Balakrishnan, N., & Nagaraja, H. N. (2008). A first course in order statistics. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

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2 Answers 2

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Given $Z_1, \ldots, Z_{n + 1} \text{ i.i.d.} \sim \text{Exp}(1)$, it can be shown that (most easily by characteristic function or moment generating function) $A_n \sim \text{Gamma}(i, 1), B_n \sim \text{Gamma}(n - i + 1, 1)$. Therefore, what to be proved is a corollary of the result below:

If $X \sim \text{Gamma}(k_1, \theta), Y \sim \text{Gamma}(k_2, \theta)$, $X$ and $Y$ are independent, then $$\frac{X}{X + Y} \sim \text{Beta}(k_1, k_2). \tag{1}$$

The standard way of showing $(1)$ is evaluating the probability $F(t) = P[X/(X + Y) \leq t]$ for $0 < t \leq 1$ directly:
\begin{align} F(t) &= P[X/(X + Y) \leq t] = \int_0^\infty P\left[\frac{x}{x + Y} \leq t\right]f_X(x)~\mathrm dx \\ &= \int_0^\infty P[Y \geq (t^{-1} - 1)x]f_X(x)~\mathrm dx \\ &= \int_0^\infty\left[\int_{(t^{-1} - 1)x}^\infty f_Y(y)dy\right] f_X(x)~\mathrm dx, \end{align} where $f_X, f_Y$ are densities of $X$ and $Y$ respectively. The density $f(t)$, of $X/(X + Y)$, can thus be obtained by taking derivative of $F$ with respect with $t$ under the integral as follows:
\begin{align} & f(t) = F'(t) = \int_0^\infty f_Y((t^{-1} - 1)x)\frac{x}{t^2}f_X(x) ~\mathrm dx \\ =& \int_0^\infty \frac{x}{t^2}\frac{1}{\Gamma(k_2)\theta^{k_2}}(t^{-1} - 1)^{k_2 - 1}x^{k_2 - 1}e^{-\frac{(t^{-1} - 1)x}{\theta}} \times \frac{1}{\Gamma(k_1)\theta^{k_1}}x^{k_1 - 1}e^{-\frac{x}{\theta}}~\mathrm dx \\ =&\frac{\Gamma(k_1 + k_2)(1 - t)^{k_2 - 1}t^{k_1 + k_2}}{\Gamma(k_1)\Gamma(k_2)t^{k_2 + 1}} \boxed{\int_0^\infty\frac{1}{\Gamma(k_1 + k_2)(\theta t)^{k_1 + k_2}}x^{k_1 + k_2 - 1}e^{-\frac{x}{\theta t}}~\mathrm dx} \\ =& \frac{(1 - t)^{k_2 - 1}t^{k_1 - 1}}{B(k_1, k_2)}, \end{align} which coincides the density function of a $\text{Beta}(k_1, k_2)$ random variable. The integral inside the box is unity because it is the integral of the density function of a $\text{Gamma}(k_1 + k_2, \theta t)$ random variable. This completes the proof.

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One way to see the connection between the two is in how both expressions connect to the uniform distribution.

See the following image where $z_i \sim exp(1)$ and $s_k = \sum_{i=1}^k z_i$.

example of connection via uniform distribution

  • The exponential distribution is the waiting time or distance between events in a Poisson process. This makes the values of $s_k/s_{n+1}$ similar to $n$ uniform distributed variables.
  • The beta distribution is an order distribution of the uniform distribution. This makes the position of a particular $s_k/s_{n+1}$ similar to a beta distribution.
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    $\begingroup$ This is a very nice stochastic process proof (+1). To be more accurate, I guess you meant $(S_1/S_{n+1},S_2/S_{n+1}, \ldots, S_n/S_{n+1}) \overset{d}{=} (U_{(1)},U_{(2)}, \ldots, U_{(n)})$, which is the order statistic of $U_1, \ldots, U_n \text{ i.i.d. } \sim U(0,1)$. Therefore $A_n/(A_n + B_n) = S_i/S_{n+1} \overset{d}{=} U_{(i)} \sim \text{Beta}(i,n+1−i)$. $\endgroup$
    – Zhanxiong
    Commented Nov 21, 2022 at 20:02

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