In mathematics and probability theory, Skorokhod's embedding theorem is either or both of two theorems that allow one to regard any suitable collection of random variables as a Wiener process (Brownian motion) evaluated at a collection of stopping times. Both results are named for the Ukrainian mathematician A. V. Skorokhod.
Let X be a real-valued random variable with expected value 0 and variance; let W denote a canonical real-valued Wiener process. Then there is a stopping time (with respect to the natural filtration of W), τ, such that W<sub>τ</sub> has the same distribution as X,
and
Let X<sub>1</sub>, X<sub>2</sub>, ... be a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables, each with expected value 0 and finite variance, and let
Then there is a sequence of stopping times τ<sub>1</sub> ≤ τ<sub>2</sub> ≤ ... such that the have the same joint distributions as the partial sums S<sub>n</sub> and τ<sub>1</sub>, τ<sub>2</sub> − τ<sub>1</sub>, τ<sub>3</sub> − τ<sub>2</sub>, ... are independent and identically distributed random variables satisfying
and