Compound Poisson process approximation

Abstract

Compound Poisson processes are often useful as approximate models, when describing the occurrence of rare events. In this paper, we develop a method for showing how close such approximations are. Our approach is to use Stein's method directly, rather than by way of declumping and a marked Poisson process; this has conceptual advantages, but entails technical difficulties. Several applications are given to illustrate the procedure.