Skip to main content
2 of 3
added 11 characters in body
David Melkuev
  • 308
  • 1
  • 2
  • 8

Conditional expectation of $X$ given $Z = X + Y$

Suppose I have two variables $X$ and $Y$ jointly drawn from a normal distribution with $\mathrm{Cov}[X,Y] = 0$. Defining $Z = X+Y$, what is the most straightforward way to compute $\mathbb{E}\left[X|Z\right]$?

I am writing \begin{align} \mathbb{E}\left[X|Z\right] & = \int_x x f_{X}(x|Z=z) \mathrm{d}x \\ & = \int_x x \frac{f_{XZ}(x,z)}{f_Z(z)} \mathrm{d}x \\ & = \int_x x \frac{f_{Y}(z-x)f_X(x)}{f_Z(z)} \mathrm{d}x, \\ \end{align}

but I am not sure if the best (and only?) way is to compute this expression using our knowledge of the pdf's. Thanks.

David Melkuev
  • 308
  • 1
  • 2
  • 8