Conditional Expectation as an L² Projection

Medium·12 min read·Interactive lab
ProbabilityHilbert SpacesConditional Expectation

Quick Quiz

1. The characterisation of E[XG]\mathbb{E}[X\mid\mathcal{G}] as the best predictor of XX via an orthogonal projection requires which space structure?
2. Which property uniquely characterises X^=E[XG]\hat{X}=\mathbb{E}[X\mid\mathcal{G}] among all G\mathcal{G}-measurable square-integrable variables?
3. E[XG]=argminYL2(G)()\mathbb{E}[X\mid\mathcal{G}]=\arg\min_{Y\in L^2(\mathcal{G})}(\,\cdot\,). Which objective is minimised?
4. To verify X^=E[XG]\hat{X}=\mathbb{E}[X\mid\mathcal{G}] it suffices to check E[(XX^)1A]=0\mathbb{E}[(X-\hat{X})\mathbf{1}_A]=0 for every AGA\in\mathcal{G}, rather than for all ZL2(G)Z\in L^2(\mathcal{G}).
5. In Longstaff-Schwartz least-squares Monte Carlo, the continuation value EQ[Ck+1Stk]\mathbb{E}^{\mathbb{Q}}[C_{k+1}\mid S_{t_k}] is estimated by: