Monotonicity of the Variance

567 Views Asked by At

Given a random variable X and two functions that satisfy: $|f(X)| \leq |g(X)| $ and $Var(f(X)) \neq 0 $ , $Var(g(X)) \neq 0 $.

Is $Var(f(X)) \leq Var(g(x)) $ ?

Trying to prove this I noticed that if $E(f(X)) = E(g(X)) = 0$ then the statement is true but I'm not sure about the general case.

Thank you!

1

There are 1 best solutions below

1
On BEST ANSWER

Let $g$ be the constant function $g(x)=100$ and let $$f(x)=\begin{cases} 0 &, x = 0 \\ 1 &, x =1\end{cases}$$

Let $X$ follows Bernoulli($0.5)$., then $Var(f(X)) > 0$ but $Var(g(X))=0$.


Edit since the condition that non-zero variance is added:

We have $Var(f(X))=\frac14$

let $$g(x) = \begin{cases} 2+\epsilon &, x = 0 \\ 2-\epsilon&, x=1 \end{cases}$$

$$Var(g(X))=Var(g(X)-(2-\epsilon))=\frac{4\epsilon^2}{4}=\epsilon^2$$

We can choose $\epsilon$ to be arbitrarily small.