Steins (magic) method
The paper presents a general introduction to the astonishing method for deriving probability approximations that was invented by Charles Stein around 50 years ago.
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arXiv subjects
Andrew D. Barbour
Publications and source records attributed to Andrew D. Barbour.
On Stein's method and perturbations
Stein's (1972) method is a very general tool for assessing the quality of approximation of the distribution of a random element by another, often simpler, distribution. In applications of Stein's method, one needs to establish a Stein identity for the approximating distribution, solve the Stein equation and estimate the behaviour of the solutions in terms of the metrics under study. For some Stein equations, solutions with good properties are known; for others, this is not the case. Barbour and Xia (1999) introduced a perturbation method for Poisson approximation, in which Stein identities for a large class of compound Poisson and translated Poisson distributions are viewed as perturbations of a Poisson distribution. In this paper, it is shown that the method can be extended to very general settings, including perturbations of normal, Poisson, compound Poisson, binomial and Poisson process approximations in terms of various metrics such as the Kolmogorov, Wasserstein and total variation metrics. Examples are provided to illustrate how the general perturbation method can be applied.
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Regenerative Compositions in the Case of Slow Variation
For $S$ a subordinator and $Π_n$ an independent Poisson process of intensity $ne^{-x}, x>0,$ we are interested in the number $K_n$ of gaps in the range of $S$ that are hit by at least one point of $Π_n$. Extending previous studies in \cite{Bernoulli, GPYI, GPYII} we focus on the case when the tail of the L{é}vy measure of $S$ is slowly varying. We view $K_n$ as the terminal value of a random process ${\cal K}_n$, and provide an asymptotic analysis of the fluctuations of ${\cal K}_n$, as $n\to\infty$, for a wide spectrum of situations.
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