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Poisson Approximation for Dependent Trials

1975; Institute of Mathematical Statistics; Volume: 3; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1214/aop/1176996359

2168-894X

Louis H. Y. Chen,

Bayesian Methods and Mixture Models

Let $X_1, \cdots, X_n$ be an arbitrary sequence of dependent Bernoulli random variables with $P(X_i = 1) = 1 - P(X_i = 0) = p_i.$ This paper establishes a general method of obtaining and bounding the error in approximating the distribution of $\sum^n_{i=1} X_i$ by the Poisson distribution. A few approximation theorems are proved under the mixing condition of Ibragimov (1959), (1962). One of them yields, as a special case and with some improvement, an approximation theorem of Le Cam (1960) for the Poisson binomial distribution. The possibility of an asymptotic expansion is also discussed and a refinement in the independent case obtained. The method is similar to that of Charles Stein (1970) in his paper on the normal approximation for dependent random variables.