Many definitions
- Discrete case, joint PMF is straightforward:
PX,Y(x,y)=P[X=x and Y=y]
- Continuous case,the joint PDF is a function fX,Y(x,y) that can be integrated to find the probability for an event A:
P[A]=∫AfX,Y(x,y)dxdy
- Marginal PDF / PMF is defined as the integral / sum over the other variable, e.g.
fX(x)=∫ΩYfX,Y(x,y)dy
I.e. the probabilty density for x when we dont care about y.
- Independent random variables: you can factor the pmf/pdf
fX,Y(x,y)=fX(x)fY(y) for continious pX,Y(x,y)=pX(x)pY(y) for discrete
- Independent and Identically Distributed (i.i.d.)
A collection of random variables is i.i.d. if all the variables or independent (the pdf/pmf can be factored) and they all have the same exact distribution, so that the joint distribution is:
fX1,...,XN(x1,...,xN)=N∏n=1fX1(xn)