arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Willem R. van Zwet.
Much is known about asymptotic expansions for asymptotically normal distributions if these distributions are either absolutely continuous or pure lattice distributions. In this paper we begin an investigation of the discrete but non-lattice case. We tackle one of the simplest examples imaginable and find that curious phenomena occur. Clearly more work is needed.
In this paper I shall try to sketch some typical aspects of Erich Lehmann's contributions to statistics through his research, his teaching, his service to the profession and his personality.
Wasssily Hoeffding's terminal illness and untimely death in 1991 put an end to efforts that were made to interview him for Statistical Science. An account of his scientific work is given in Fisher and Sen [The Collected Works of Wassily Hoeffding (1994) Springer], but the present authors felt that the statistical community should also be told about the life of this remarkable man. He contributed much to statistical science, but will also live on in the memory of those who knew him as a kind and modest teacher and friend, whose courage and learning were matched by a wonderful sense of humor.
Consider n items located randomly on a circle of length 1. The locations of the items are assumed to be independent and uniformly distributed on [0,1). A picker starts at point 0 and has to collect all n items by moving along the circle at unit speed in either direction. In this paper we study the minimal travel time of the picker. We obtain upper bounds and analyze the exact travel time distribution. Further, we derive closed-form limiting results when n tends to infinity. We determine the behavior of the limiting distribution in a positive neighborhood of zero. The limiting random variable is closely related to exponential functionals associated with a Poisson process. These functionals occur in many areas and have been intensively studied in recent literature.