Stationary ergodic process

In probability theory, stationary ergodic process is a stochastic process which exhibits both stationarity and ergodicity. In essence this implies that the random process will not change its statistical properties with time and that its statistical properties (such as the theoretical mean and variance of the process) can be deduced from a single, sufficiently long sample (realization) of the process.

Stationarity is the property of a random process which guarantees that its statistical properties, such as the mean value, its moments and variance, will not change over time. A stationary process is one whose probability distribution is the same at all times. For more information see stationary process.

Several sub-types of stationarity are defined: first-order, second-order, nth-order, wide-sense and strict-sense. For details please see the reference below.

An ergodic process is one which conforms to the ergodic theorem. The theorem allows the time average of a conforming process to equal the ensemble average. In practice this means that statistical sampling can be performed at one instant across a group of identical processes or sampled over time on a single process with no change in the measured result. Also see ergodic theory and ergodic process.

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