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)=Nn=1fX1(xn)