A Category of Probability Spaces

Abstract

We introduce a category Prob of probability spaces whose objects are all probability spaces and arrows are corresponding to measurable functions satisfying an absolutely continuous requirement. We can consider a Prob-arrow as an evolving direction of information with a way of its interpretation. We introduce a contravariant functor E from Prob to Set, the category of sets. The functor E provides conditional expectations along arrows in Prob, which are generalizations of the classical conditional expectations. For a Prob arrow f, we introduce two concepts f-measurability and f-independence and investigate their interaction with conditional expectations along f. We also show that the completion of probability spaces is naturally formulated as an endofunctor of Prob.