Comment by penteract

Comment by penteract 2 days ago

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Here's how to formulate the question in continuous space/time:

Random walks can be defined on continuous space and time as a probability distribution on functions R -> R^n (Brownian motion in n dimensions).

We can then ask whether Brownian motion beginning at the origin will ever revisit it i.e.

Given 2D Brownian motion X such that X(0)=(0,0), the probability that there exists t>0 such that X(t)=(0,0) is 1.

Given 3D Brownian motion X such that X(0)=(0,0,0), the probability that there exists t>0 such that X(t)=(0,0,0) is 0. (This is more clearly true when it doesn't begin at the origin, but it's almost certainly not at the origin at t=1, and you can divide the half open interval (0,1] into a countable number of intervals, each of which have 0 probability of passing through the origin.)

Random walks in 2D are space filling curves; random walks in 3D are not.