Poisson type approximations for sums of dependent variables

Our aim is to investigate Poisson type approximations to the sums of dependent integer-valued random variables. In this thesis, only one type of dependence is considered, namely m-dependent random variables. The accuracy of approximation is measured in the total variation, local, uniform (Kolmogorov) and Wasserstein metrics. Results can be divided into four parts. The first part is devoted to 2-runs, when pi=p. We generalize Theorem 5.2 from A.D. Barbour and A. Xia “Poisson perturbations” in two directions: by estimating the second order asymptotic expansion and asymptotic expansion in the exponent. Moreover, lower bound estimates are established, proving the optimality of upper bound estimates. Since, the method of proof does not allow to get small constants, in certain cases, we calculate asymptotically sharp constants. In the second part, we consider sums of 1-dependent random variables, concentrated on nonnegative integers and satisfying analogue of Franken's condition. All results of this part are comparable to the known results for independent summands. In the third part, we consider Poisson type approximations for sums of 1-dependent symmetric three-point distributions. We are unaware about any Poisson-type approximation result for dependent random variables, when symmetry of the distribution is taken into account. In the last part, we consider 1-dependent non-identically distributed Bernoulli random variables. It is shown, that even for this simple generalization of the Poisson binomial model, very elaborative calculations are needed. For the proofs, we use Heinrich's method, which is a version of the characteristic function method