# Mathematical and Applied Statistics Lesson of the Day – The Motivation and Intuition Behind Markov’s Inequality

Markov’s inequality may seem like a rather arbitrary pair of mathematical expressions that are coincidentally related to each other by an inequality sign:

$P(X \geq c) \leq E(X) \div c,$ where $c > 0$.

However, there is a practical motivation behind Markov’s inequality, and it can be posed in the form of a simple question: How often is the random variable $X$ “far” away from its “centre” or “central value”?

Intuitively, the “central value” of $X$ is the value that of $X$ that is most commonly (or most frequently) observed.  Thus, as $X$ deviates further and further from its “central value”, we would expect those distant-from-the-centre vales to be less frequently observed.

Recall that the expected value, $E(X)$, is a measure of the “centre” of $X$.  Thus, we would expect that the probability of $X$ being very far away from $E(X)$ is very low.  Indeed, Markov’s inequality rigorously confirms this intuition; here is its rough translation:

As $c$ becomes really far away from $E(X)$, the event $X \geq c$ becomes less probable.

You can confirm this by substituting several key values of $c$.

• If $c = E(X)$, then $P[X \geq E(X)] \leq 1$; this is the highest upper bound that $P(X \geq c)$ can get.  This makes intuitive sense; $X$ is going to be frequently observed near its own expected value.

• If $c \rightarrow \infty$, then $P(X \geq \infty) \leq 0$.  By Kolmogorov’s axioms of probability, any probability must be inclusively between $0$ and $1$, so $P(X \geq \infty) = 0$.  This makes intuitive sense; there is no possible way that $X$ can be bigger than positive infinity.