Itô's lemma
Identity in Itô calculus analogous to the chain rule / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about a result in stochastic calculus. For the result in group theory, see Itô's theorem.
In mathematics, Itô's lemma or Itô's formula (also called the Itô–Doeblin formula, especially in the French literature) is an identity used in Itô calculus to find the differential of a time-dependent function of a stochastic process. It serves as the stochastic calculus counterpart of the chain rule. It can be heuristically derived by forming the Taylor series expansion of the function up to its second derivatives and retaining terms up to first order in the time increment and second order in the Wiener process increment. The lemma is widely employed in mathematical finance, and its best known application is in the derivation of the Black–Scholes equation for option values.
Kiyoshi Itô published a proof of the formula in 1951.[1]