Probability – Product Distribution of Two or More Uniform Distributions

probabilityuniform distribution

Say $X_1, X_2, \ldots, X_n$ are independent and identically distributed uniform random variables on the interval $(0,1)$.

What is the product distribution of two of such random variables, e.g.,
$Z_2 = X_1 \cdot X_2$?

What if there are 3; $Z_3 = X_1 \cdot X_2 \cdot X_3$?

What if there are $n$ of such uniform variables?
$Z_n = X_1 \cdot X_2 \cdot \ldots \cdot X_n$?

Best Answer

We can at least work out the distribution of two IID ${\rm Uniform}(0,1)$ variables $X_1, X_2$: Let $Z_2 = X_1 X_2$. Then the CDF is $$\begin{align*} F_{Z_2}(z) &= \Pr[Z_2 \le z] = \int_{x=0}^1 \Pr[X_2 \le z/x] f_{X_1}(x) \, dx \\ &= \int_{x=0}^z \, dx + \int_{x=z}^1 \frac{z}{x} \, dx \\ &= z - z \log z. \end{align*}$$ Thus the density of $Z_2$ is $$f_{Z_2}(z) = -\log z, \quad 0 < z \le 1.$$ For a third variable, we would write $$\begin{align*} F_{Z_3}(z) &= \Pr[Z_3 \le z] = \int_{x=0}^1 \Pr[X_3 \le z/x] f_{Z_2}(x) \, dx \\ &= -\int_{x=0}^z \log x dx - \int_{x=z}^1 \frac{z}{x} \log x \, dx. \end{align*}$$ Then taking the derivative gives $$f_{Z_3}(z) = \frac{1}{2} \left( \log z \right)^2, \quad 0 < z \le 1.$$ In general, we can conjecture that $$f_{Z_n}(z) = \begin{cases} \frac{(- \log z)^{n-1}}{(n-1)!}, & 0 < z \le 1 \\ 0, & {\rm otherwise},\end{cases}$$ which we can prove via induction on $n$. I leave this as an exercise.

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