A New Method for Bounding the Distance Between Sums of Independent Integer-Valued Random Variables

Let X ₁, X ₂,..., X _n and Y ₁, Y ₂,..., Y _n be two sequences of independent random variables which take values in ? and have finite second moments. Using a new probabilistic method, upper bounds for the Kolmogorov and total variation distances between the distributions of the sums \(\sum_{i=1}^{n}X_{i}\) and \(\sum_{i=1}^{n}Y_{i}\) are proposed. These bounds adopt a simple closed form when the distributions of the coordinates are compared with respect to the convex order. Moreover, they include a factor which depends on the smoothness of the distribution of the sum of the X _i ’s or Y _i ’s, in that way leading to sharp approximation error estimates, under appropriate conditions for the distribution parameters. Finally, specific examples, concerning approximation bounds for various discrete distributions, are presented for illustration.