English

Test Martingales for bounded random variables

Methodology 2021-09-21 v1

Abstract

Given a positive random variable XX, X0X\ge0 a.s., a null hypothesis H0:E(X)μH_0:E(X)\le\mu and a random sample of infinite size of XX, we construct test supermartingales for H0H_0, i.e. positive processes that are supermartingale if the null hypothesis is satisfied. We test hypothesis H0H_0 by testing the supermartingale hypothesis on a test supermartingale. We construct test supermartingales that lead to tests with power 1. We derive confidence lower bounds. For bounded random variables we extend the techniques to two-sided tests of H0:E(X)=μH_0:E(X)=\mu and to the construction of confidence intervals. In financial auditing random sampling is proposed as one of the possible techniques to gather enough evidence to justify rejection of the null hypothesis that there is a 'material' misstatement in a financial report. The goal of our work is to provide a mathematical context that could represent such process of gathering evidence by means of repeated random sampling, while ensuring an intended significance level.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2109.08923,
  title  = {Test Martingales for bounded random variables},
  author = {Harrie Hendriks},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.08923},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

This revision of arXiv:1801.09418 contains more precise statements about the expected run time of the tests. It also contains references to recent relevant publications

R2 v1 2026-06-24T06:06:02.307Z