Solved – Expected value of a marginal distribution when the joint distribution is given

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I am asked to find the expected value of a vector of two random variables when the joint density is given. Is the recipe for solving this problem:

  • Find the marginal distributions
  • Find the expected values of the marginal distributions

which will involve a relatively long integration process, since I have to find the two marginals and then the two expected values?

Or is there some shortcut?

Best Answer

As rightly pointed out by Dilip Sarwate, computing the expectation of one component as a two dimensional integral requires integrating out the other element of the vector: $$\mathbb{E}[X] = \iint x\,f_{X,Y}(x,y)\,\mathrm dy\,\mathrm dx,$$ (which is a special case of the so-called law of the uncounscious statistician). The only simplifications I can think of is

  1. when finding the conditional expectation of one component given the other is easier: $$\mathbb{E}[X] = \mathbb{E}[\mathbb{E}[X|Y]] = \int x\,f_{X|Y}(x|y)\,\mathrm dx\,f_Y(y)\,\mathrm dy,$$ by the double projection theorem, in the sense that this could require computing a single marginal instead of two;
  2. when computing the marginal cdf is easier, since $$\mathbb{E}[X] = \int_{-\infty}^0 F_X(x)\,\mathrm dx-\int_{+\infty}^0 (1-F_X(x))\,\mathrm dx$$ by an integration by parts.