English

On Sharpest Tail Bounds for Functions of Tail Bounded Random Variables

Probability 2026-05-26 v3

Abstract

Consider nn real/complex, independent/dependent random variables with respective tail bounds and gg a measurable function of the r.v.'s. Consider ff the "sharpest" tail bound of gg (sharpest in the sense that if ff were any less, then for some X1,...,XnX_1,...,X_n satisfying the conditions, g(X1,...,Xn)g(X_1,...,X_n) would not satisfy ff). Significant research has been done to approximate ff often with high accuracy. These results are often of the form that for gg in this family and tail bounds of XkX_k in this family, ff is bounded by some ff' with high accuracy. However, the question "what would it take to find ff exactly?" has received little attention, apparently even for simple cases. This is the question we try to answer. For X1,...,XnX_1,...,X_n required to be mutually independent, first the XkX_k are simplified to be monotone on (0,1)(0,1) WLOG. This strengthens convergence in distribution to convergence a.e. (Skorokhod's representation theorem) and allows defining shift operators, which help reduce the space of r.v.'s one searches to find ff and/or the maximum measure of a subset. We do find ff in some special cases, however ff rarely has a closed form. For X1,...,XnX_1,...,X_n dependent/not necessarily independent, another reduction in the space of r.v.'s one searches to find ff is done.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.04267,
  title  = {On Sharpest Tail Bounds for Functions of Tail Bounded Random Variables},
  author = {Stephen Jordan Harrison},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.04267},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

PhD thesis, University of New Mexico, 2025. 77 pages. This arXiv version adds comments/references about Skorokhod's representation theorem and Sklar's theorem (absent from the university version), with explicit notes in the text indicating these additions

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:54:42.740Z