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Let YtYt be the malnutrition state measured at time t; t=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Then, YtYt is said to have the Markov property, if P(Yt+1∣Y1,Y2,…,Yt)=P(Yt+1∣Yt)P(Yt+1∣Y1,Y2,…,Yt)=P(Yt+1∣Yt). In otherwords, the probability of future state of malnutrition depends only on the current state and not on the past states. The conditional probabilities describing the future state of the process given the states occupied by the process in the past are referred to as transition probabilities and are denoted by
pij(t,t+1)=P(Yt+1=j∣Yt=i),pij(t,t+1)=P(Yt+1=j∣Yt=i),(1)
where pij≥0, ∀i,jpij≥0, ∀i,j; ∑jpij=1, ∀i∑jpij=1, ∀i; i, j=1, 2, 3, the states of malnutrition.
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