Patterns in Random Walks and Brownian Motion Jim Pitman and Wenpin Tang Abstract We ask if it is possible to find some particular continuous paths of unit length in linear Brownian motion. Beginning with a discrete version of the problem, we derive the asymptotics of the expected waiting time for several interesting patterns. These suggest corresponding results on the existence/non-existence of continuous paths embedded in Brownian motion. With further effort we are able to prove some of these existence and non-existence results by various stochastic analysis arguments. A list of open problems is presented. AMS 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification: 60C05, 60G17, 60J65. 1 Introduction and Main Results We are interested in the question of embedding some continuous-time stochastic processes .Zu;0Ä u Ä 1/ into a Brownian path .BtI t 0/, without time-change or scaling, just by a random translation of origin in spacetime. More precisely, we ask the following: Question 1 Given some distribution of a process Z with continuous paths, does there exist a random time T such that .BTCu BT I 0 Ä u Ä 1/ has the same distribution as .Zu;0Ä u Ä 1/? The question of whether external randomization is allowed to construct such a random time T, is of no importance here. In fact, we can simply ignore Brownian J. Pitman ()•W.Tang Department of Statistics, University of California, 367 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-3860, USA e-mail:
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