Convergence of Probability Measures. By P. Billingsley. Chichester, Sussex, Wiley, 1968. xii, 253 p. 9 1/4“. 117s.

Convergence of Probability Measures

The author's preface gives an outline: "This book is about weakconvergence methods in metric spaces, with applications sufficient to show their power and utility. The Introduction motivates the definitions and indicates how the theory will yield solutions to problems arising outside it. Chapter 1 sets out the basic general theorems, which are then specialized in Chapter 2 to the space C[0, l ] of continuous functions on the unit interval and in Chapter 3 to the space D [0, 1 ] of functions with discontinuities of the first kind. The results of the first three chapters are used in Chapter 4 to derive a variety of limit theorems for dependent sequences of random variables. " The book develops and expands on Donsker's 1951 and 1952 papers on the invariance principle and empirical distributions. The basic random variables remain real-valued although, of course, measures on C[0, l ] and D[0, l ] are vitally used. Within this framework, there are various possibilities for a different and apparently better treatment of the material. More of the general theory of weak convergence of probabilities on separable metric spaces would be useful. Metrizability of the convergence is not brought up until late in the Appendix. The close relation of the Prokhorov metric and a metric for convergence in probability is (hence) not mentioned (see V. Strassen, Ann. Math. Statist. 36 (1965), 423-439; the reviewer, ibid. 39 (1968), 1563-1572). This relation would illuminate and organize such results as Theorems 4.1, 4.2 and 4.4 which give isolated, ad hoc connections between weak convergence of measures and nearness in probability. In the middle of p. 16, it should be noted that C*(S) consists of signed measures which need only be finitely additive if 5 is not compact. On p. 239, where the author twice speaks of separable subsets having nonmeasurable cardinal, he means "discrete" rather than "separable." Theorem 1.4 is Ulam's theorem that a Borel probability on a complete separable metric space is tight. Theorem 1 of Appendix 3 weakens completeness to topological completeness. After mentioning that probabilities on the rationals are tight, the author says it is an

Convergence of probability measures

Continuously indexed Gaussian fields (GFs) are the most important ingredient in spatial statistical modelling and geostatistics. The specification through the covariance function gives an intuitive interpretation of the field properties. On the computational side, GFs are hampered with the big n problem, since the cost of factorizing dense matrices is cubic in the dimension. Although computational power today is at an all time high, this fact seems still to be a computational bottleneck in many applications. Along with GFs, there is the class of Gaussian Markov random fields (GMRFs) which are discretely indexed. The Markov property makes the precision matrix involved sparse, which enables the use of numerical algorithms for sparse matrices, that for fields in R-2 only use the square root of the time required by general algorithms. The specification of a GMRF is through its full conditional distributions but its marginal properties are not transparent in such a parameterization. We show that, using an approximate stochastic weak solution to (linear) stochastic partial differential equations, we can, for some GFs in the Matern class, provide an explicit link, for any triangulation of R-d, between GFs and GMRFs, formulated as a basis function representation. The consequence is that we can take the best from the two worlds and do the modelling by using GFs but do the computations by using GMRFs. Perhaps more importantly, our approach generalizes to other covariance functions generated by SPDEs, including oscillating and non-stationary GFs, as well as GFs on manifolds. We illustrate our approach by analysing global temperature data with a non-stationary model defined on a sphere. (Less)

https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1467-9868.2011.00777.x

An explicit link between Gaussian fields and Gaussian Markov random fields: the stochastic partial differential equation approach

Preface to the revised edition Remarks on notation 1. Basic examples 2. Characterization and existence 3. Stable processes and their extensions 4. The Levy-Ito decomposition of sample functions 5. Distributional properties of Levy processes 6. Subordination and density transformation 7. Recurrence and transience 8. Potential theory for Levy processes 9. Wiener-Hopf factorizations 10. More distributional properties Supplement Solutions to exercises References and author index Subject index.

Lévy processes and infinitely divisible distributions

Probability and Measure

The ratio $P(S_n=x)/P(Z_n=x)$ is investigated for three cases: (a) when $S_n$ is a sum of 1-dependent non-negative integer-valued random variables (rvs), satisfying some moment conditions, and $Z_n$ is Poisson rv; (b) when $S_n$ is a statistic of 2-runs and $Z_n$ is negative binomial rv; and (c) when $S_n$ is statistic of $N(1,1)$-events and $Z_n$ is a binomial r.v. We also consider the approximation of $P(S_n\geqslant x)$ by Poisson distribution with parameter depending on $x$.

On large deviations for sums of discrete m-dependent random variables

This paper develops strong solutions and stochastic solutions for the tempered fractional diffusion equation on bounded domains. First the eigenvalue problem for tempered fractional derivatives is solved. Then a separation of variables, and eigenfunction expansions in time and space, are used to write strong solutions. Finally, stochastic solutions are written in terms of an inverse subordinator.

Transient anomalous sub-diffusion on bounded domains

In this paper, we obtain a probabilistic relationship between the exponential Bell polynomials and the weighted sums of independent Poisson random variables. A recently established probabilistic co...

A probabilistic interpretation of the Bell polynomials

The effect that weighted summands have on each other in approximations of $S=w_1S_1+w_2S_2+\cdots+w_NS_N$ is investigated. Here, $S_i$'s are sums of integer-valued random variables, and $w_i$ denote weights, $i=1,\dots,N$. Two cases are considered: the general case of independent random variables when their closeness is ensured by the matching of factorial moments and the case when the $S_i$ has the Markov Binomial distribution. The Kolmogorov metric is used to estimate the accuracy of approximation.

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On closeness of two discrete weighted sums.

The space-time fractional Poisson process (STFPP), defined by Orsingher and Poilto in \cite{sfpp}, is a generalization of the time fractional Poisson process (TFPP) and the space fractional Poisson process (SFPP). We study the fractional generalization of the non-homogeneous Poisson process and call it the non-homogeneous space-time fractional Poisson process (NSTFPP). We compute their {\it pmf} and generating function and investigate the associated differential equation. The limit theorems and the law of iterated logarithm for the NSTFPP process are studied. We study the distributional properties, the asymptotic expansion of the correlation function of the non-homogeneous time fractional Poisson process (NTFPP) and subsequently investigate the long-range dependence (LRD) property of a special NTFPP. We investigate the limit theorem and the LRD property for the fractional non-homogeneous Poisson process (FNPP), studied by Leonenko et. al. (2016). Finally, we present some simulated sample paths of the NSTFPP process.

Palaniappan Vellaisamy

Papers

On large deviations for sums of discrete m-dependent random variables

Transient anomalous sub-diffusion on bounded domains

A probabilistic interpretation of the Bell polynomials

On closeness of two discrete weighted sums.

Non-homogeneous space-time fractional Poisson processes