Modern Stochastics: Theory and Applications

The factorial moments of any Markov branching process describe the behaviour of its probability generating function $F(t,s)$ in the neighbourhood of the point $s=1$. They are applied to solve the forward Kolmogorov equation for the critical Markov branching process with geometric reproduction of particles. The solution includes quickly convergent recurrent iterations of polynomials. The obtained results on factorial moments enable computation of statistical measures as shape and skewness. They are also applicable to the comparison between critical geometric branching and linear birth-death processes.

The effect that weighted summands have on each other in approximations of $S={w_{1}}{S_{1}}+{w_{2}}{S_{2}}+\cdots +{w_{N}}{S_{N}}$ 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.