Show dependence of unity of unit squares

31 Views Asked by At

Let $(X_1, X_2)$ be a pair of uniform distributed random coordinates on $S:=([-1,0]\times[-1,0])\;\cup\; [0,1]\times[0,1])$. Are $X_1, X_2$ independent? Are $X_1, X_2$ uncorrelated?

If you draw the picture you can see they're obviously dependent are positively correlated. If I know $X_1$ is negative, then by all means $X_2$ is negative as well, and vice versa. Also, they occur in the same "direction". So positively correlated. The intuition is quite obvious. Here is my formal approach:

Show that $f_{X,Y}(x,y)\not= f_X(x)f_Y(y)$.

We know that $$f_{X,Y}(x,y)=\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]^2}(x,y)+\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]^2}(x,y)\right)$$ and we use $1/2$ because when we integrate the above it needs to equal 1. To obtain $f_X(x)$ we integrate over $y$ and analogous for $f_Y(y)$. $$f_X(x)=\int_{\mathbb{R}}f_{X,Y}(x,y)dy=\int_{\mathbb{R}}\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]^2}(x,y)+\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]^2}(x,y)\right)dy$$ $$=\frac{1}{2}\int_{\mathbb{R}}\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]^2}(x,y)dy+\frac{1}{2}\int_{\mathbb{R}}\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]^2}(x,y)dy$$ $$=\frac{1}{2}\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]}\int_{0}^1dy+\frac{1}{2}\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]}\int_{0}^1dy$$ $$=\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]}+\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]}\right)$$

For $f_Y$ I will obtain the exact same thing. So what remains to be shown is $$\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]^2}(x,y)+\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]^2}(x,y)\right)\not=\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]}+\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]}\right)\cdot\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]}+\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]}\right)$$

I tried this by integrating over $x$ and $y$ but I will be left with an identity saying $1=1$. But I know they are not independent. Where is my error?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

6
On BEST ANSWER

Two things to note about that last equation you wrote. First, observe that the indicator functions on the right should carry variable inputs with them -- i.e. $\mathbf 1_{[-1, 0]}(x)$, etc. Also, note that $$\mathbf 1_{[-1, 0]}(x) + \mathbf 1_{[0, 1]}(x) = \mathbf 1_{[-1, 1]}(x).$$ (This isn't actually quite right because the function should evaluate to $2$ at $x = 0$, but that's just a single point and we can safely ignore it.)

Hence, that last equation should actually be: $$\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,0]^2}(x,y)+\mathbf{1}_{[0,1]^2}(x,y)\right)\not=\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,1]}(x)\right)\cdot\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathbf{1}_{[-1,1]}(y)\right)$$ and your task is now to find a region on the plane with positive measure for which this equation does not hold. Can you take it from here?