This paper describes methods for randomly thinning certain classes of spatial point processes. In the case of a Markov point process, the proposed method involves a dependent thinning of a spatial birth-and-death process, where clans of ancestors associated with the original points are identified, and where one simulates backwards and forwards in order to obtain the thinned process. In the case...

Sufficient conditions are developed, under which the compound Poisson distribution has maximal entropy within a natural class of probability measures on the nonnegative integers. Recently, one of the authors [O. Johnson, Stoch. Proc. Appl., 2007] used a semigroup approach to show that the Poisson has maximal entropy among all ultra-log-concave distributions with fixed mean. We show via a non-tr...

Abstract: We give a simple development of the concentration properties of compound Poisson measures on the nonnegative integers. A new modification of the Herbst argument is applied to an appropriate modified logarithmic-Sobolev inequality to derive new concentration bounds. When the measure of interest does not have finite exponential moments, these bounds exhibit optimal polynomial decay. Sim...

Compound Poisson approximation is a useful tool in a variety of applications, including insurance mathematics, reliability theory, and molecular sequence analysis. In this paper, we review the ways in which Stein's method can currently be used to derive bounds on the error in such approximations. The theoretical basis for the construction of error bounds is systematically discussed, and a numbe...

We consider the problem of claims reserving and estimating run-off triangles. We generalize the gamma cell distributions model which leads to Tweedie’s compound Poisson model. Choosing a suitable parametrization, we estimate the parameters of our model within the framework of generalized linear models (see Jørgensen-de Souza [2] and Smyth-Jørgensen [8]). We show that these methods lead to reaso...

Abstract: The compound decision problem for a vector of independent Poisson random variables with possibly different means has half a century old solution. However, it appears that the classical solution needs smoothing adjustment even when there are many observations and relatively small means such that the empirical distribution is close to its mean. We discuss three such adjustments. We also...

We consider epidemics in populations that are partitioned into small groups known as households. Whilst infectious, a typical infective makes global and local contact with individuals chosen independently and uniformly from the whole population or their own household, as appropriate. Previously, the classical Poisson approximation for the number of survivors of a severe epidemic has been extend...

Traffic measurements on a ring local area computer network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are presented. The analysis of the arrival pattern shows that the arrival processes are neither Poisson nor compound Poisson. An alternative model called “packet train” is proposed. In the train model, the traffic on the network consists of a number of packet streams between various pairs of ...

Traffic measurements on a ring local area computer network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are presented. The analysis of the arrival pattern shows that the arrival processes are neither Poisson nor compound Poisson. An alternative model called “packet train” is proposed. In the train model, the traffic on the network consists of a number of packet streams between various pairs of ...