In this paper we derive limit theorems for the conditional distribution of X1 given Sn=sn as n→ ∞, where the Xi are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables, Sn=X1+··· +Xn, and sn/n converges or sn ≡ s is constant. We obtain convergence in total variation of PX1∣ Sn/n=s to a distribution associated to that of X1 and of PnX1∣ Sn=s to a gamma distribution. The case of stable distributions (to which the method of associated distributions cannot be applied) is studied in detail.

Continuing the work in Bertoin (2011) we study the distribution of the maximal number X*k of offspring amongst all individuals in a critical Galton‒Watson process started with k ancestors, treating the case when the reproduction law has a regularly varying tail F̅ with index −α for α > 2 (and, hence, finite variance). We show that X*k suitably normalized converges in distribution to a Fréchet law with shape parameter α/2; this contrasts sharply with the case 1< α<2 when the variance is infinite. More generally, we obtain a weak limit theorem for the offspring sequence ranked in decreasing order, in terms of atoms of a certain doubly stochastic Poisson measure.

We study a multiclass Markovian queueing network with switchover across a set of many-server stations. New arrivals to each station follow a nonstationary Poisson process. Each job waiting in queue may, after some exponentially distributed patience time, switch over to another station or leave the network following a probabilistic and state-dependent mechanism. We analyze the performance of such networks under the many-server heavy-traffic limiting regimes, including the critically loaded quality-and-efficiency-driven (QED) regime, and the overloaded efficiency-driven (ED) regime. We also study the limits corresponding to mixing the underloaded quality-driven (QD) regime with the QED and ED regimes. We establish fluid and diffusion limits of the queue-length processes in all regimes. The fluid limits are characterized by ordinary differential equations. The diffusion limits are characterized by stochastic differential equations, with a piecewise-linear drift term and a constant (QED) or time-varying (ED) covariance matrix. We investigate the load balancing effect of switchover in the mixed regimes, demonstrating the migration of workload from overloaded stations to underloaded stations and quantifying the load balancing impact of switchover probabilities.

When the search algorithm QuickSelect compares keys during its execution in order to find a key of target rank, it must operate on the keys' representations or internal structures, which were ignored by the previous studies that quantified the execution cost for the algorithm in terms of the number of required key comparisons. In this paper we analyze running costs for the algorithm that take into account not only the number of key comparisons, but also the cost of each key comparison. We suppose that keys are represented as sequences of symbols generated by various probabilistic sources and that QuickSelect operates on individual symbols in order to find the target key. We identify limiting distributions for the costs, and derive integral and series expressions for the expectations of the limiting distributions. These expressions are used to recapture previously obtained results on the number of key comparisons required by the algorithm.

In the paper we consider the density functions of random variables that can be written as integrals of exponential functions of Gaussian random fields. In particular, we provide closed-form asymptotic bounds for the density functions and, under smoothness conditions, we derive exact tail approximations of the density functions.

Let Xi,i ∈ ℕ, be independent and identically distributed random variables with values in ℕ0. We transform (‘prune’) the sequence {X1,…,Xn},n∈ ℕ, of discrete random samples into a sequence {0,1,2,…,Yn}, n∈ ℕ, of contiguous random sets by replacing Xn+1 with Yn +1 if Xn+1 >Yn. We consider the asymptotic behaviour of Yn as n→∞. Applications include path growth in digital search trees and the number of tables in Pitman's Chinese restaurant process if the latter is conditioned on its limit value.

We consider the tree-reduced path of a symmetric random walk on ℤd. It is interesting to ask about the number of turns Tn in the reduced path after n steps. This question arises from inverting the signatures of lattice paths: Tn gives an upper bound of the number of terms in the signature needed to reconstruct a ‘random’ lattice path with n steps. We show that, when n is large, the mean and variance of Tn in the asymptotic expansion have the same order as n, while the lower-order terms are O(1). We also obtain limit theorems for Tn, including the large deviations principle, central limit theorem, and invariance principle. Similar techniques apply to other finite patterns in a lattice path.

A stationary Poisson cylinder process in the d-dimensional Euclidean space is composed of a stationary Poisson process of k-flats (0 ≤ k ≤ d−1) which are dilated by independent and identically distributed random compact cylinder bases taken from the corresponding (d−k)-dimensional orthogonal complement. If the second moment of the (d−k)-volume of the typical cylinder base exists, we prove asymptotic normality of the d-volume of the union set of Poisson cylinders that covers an expanding star-shaped domain ϱ W as ϱ grows unboundedly. Due to the long-range dependencies within the union set of cylinders, the variance of its d-volume in ϱ W increases asymptotically proportional to the (d+k) th power of ϱ. To obtain the exact asymptotic behaviour of this variance, we need a distinction between discrete and continuous directional distributions of the typical k-flat. A corresponding central limit theorem for the surface content is stated at the end.

We consider a class of multifractional processes related to Hermite polynomials. We show that these processes satisfy an invariance principle. To prove the main result of this paper, we use properties of the Hermite polynomials and the multiple Wiener integrals. Because of the multifractionality, we also need to deal with variations of the Hurst index by means of some uniform estimates.

The asymptotic behavior is studied for an interacting particle system that involves independent motion and random sampling. For a fixed sampling rate, the empirical process of the particle system converges to the Fleming-Viot process when the number of particles approaches ∞. If the sampling rate approaches 0 as the number of particles becomes large, the corresponding empirical process will converge to the deterministic flow of the motion. In the main results of this paper, we study the corresponding central limit theorems and large deviations. Both the Gaussian limits and the large deviations depend on the sampling scales explicitly.

In this paper we develop an asymptotic theory of aggregated linear processes, and determine in particular the limit distribution of a large class of linear and nonlinear functionals of such processes. Given a sample {Y1(N),…,Yn(N)} of the normalized N-fold aggregated process, we describe the limiting behavior of statistics TN,n= TN,n(Y1(N),…, Yn(N)) in both of the cases n/N(n) → 0 and N(n)/n → 0, assuming either a ‘limiting long- or short-memory’ condition on the underlying linear process.

We construct a response adaptive design, described in terms of a two-color urn model, targeting fixed asymptotic allocations. We prove asymptotic results for the process of colors generated by the urn and for the process of its compositions. An application of the proposed urn model is presented in an estimation problem context.

A scale-free tree with the parameter β is very close to a star if β is just a bit larger than −1, whereas it is close to a random recursive tree if β is very large. Through the Zagreb index, we consider the whole scene of the evolution of the scale-free trees model as β goes from −1 to + ∞. The critical values of β are shown to be the first several nonnegative integer numbers. We get the first two moments and the asymptotic behaviors of this index of a scale-free tree for all β. The generalized plane-oriented recursive trees model is also mentioned in passing, as well as the Gordon-Scantlebury and the Platt indices, which are closely related to the Zagreb index.

Let {X(t):t∈ℝ} be the integrated on–off process with regularly varying on-periods, and let {Y(t):t∈ℝ} be a centered Lévy process with regularly varying positive jumps (independent of X(·)). We study the exact asymptotics of ℙ(supt≥0{X(t)+Y(t)-ct}>u) as u→∞, with special attention to the case r=c, where r is the increase rate of the on–off process during the on-periods.

Multivariate regular variation plays a role in assessing tail risk in diverse applications such as finance, telecommunications, insurance, and environmental science. The classical theory, being based on an asymptotic model, sometimes leads to inaccurate and useless estimates of probabilities of joint tail regions. This problem can be partly ameliorated by using hidden regular variation (see Resnick (2002) and Mitra and Resnick (2011)). We offer a more flexible definition of hidden regular variation that provides improved risk estimates for a larger class of tail risk regions.

Consider a generic data unit of random size L that needs to be transmitted over a channel of unit capacity. The channel availability dynamic is modeled as an independent and identically distributed sequence {A, Ai}i≥1 that is independent of L. During each period of time that the channel becomes available, say Ai, we attempt to transmit the data unit. If L <Ai, the transmission is considered successful; otherwise, we wait for the next available period Ai+1 and attempt to retransmit the data from the beginning. We investigate the asymptotic properties of the number of retransmissions N and the total transmission time T until the data is successfully transmitted. In the context of studying the completion times in systems with failures where jobs restart from the beginning, it was first recognized by Fiorini, Sheahan and Lipsky (2005) and Sheahan, Lipsky, Fiorini and Asmussen (2006) that this model results in power-law and, in general, heavy-tailed delays. The main objective of this paper is to uncover the detailed structure of this class of heavy-tailed distributions induced by retransmissions. More precisely, we study how the functional relationship ℙ[L>x]-1 ≈ Φ (ℙ[A>x]-1) impacts the distributions of N and T; the approximation ‘≈’ will be appropriately defined in the paper based on the context. Depending on the growth rate of Φ(·), we discover several criticality points that separate classes of different functional behaviors of the distribution of N. For example, we show that if log(Φ(n)) is slowly varying then log(1/ℙ[N>n]) is essentially slowly varying as well. Interestingly, if log(Φ(n)) grows slower than e√(logn) then we have the asymptotic equivalence log(ℙ[N>n]) ≈ - log(Φ(n)). However, if log(Φ(n)) grows faster than e√(logn), this asymptotic equivalence does not hold and admits a different functional form. Similarly, different types of distributional behavior are shown for moderately heavy tails (Weibull distributions) where log(ℙ[N>n]) ≈ -(log Φ(n))1/(β+1), assuming that log Φ(n) ≈ nβ, as well as the nearly exponential ones of the form log(ℙ[N>n]) ≈ -n/(log n)1/γ, γ>0, when Φ(·) grows faster than two exponential scales log log (Φ(n)) ≈ nγ.

We introduce and analyze a random tree model associated to Hoppe's urn. The tree is built successively by adding nodes to the existing tree when starting with the single root node. In each step a node is added to the tree as a child of an existing node, where these parent nodes are chosen randomly with probabilities proportional to their weights. The root node has weight ϑ>0, a given fixed parameter, all other nodes have weight 1. This resembles the stochastic dynamic of Hoppe's urn. For ϑ=1, the resulting tree is the well-studied random recursive tree. We analyze the height, internal path length, and number of leaves of the Hoppe tree with n nodes as well as the depth of the last inserted node asymptotically as n→∞. Mainly expectations, variances, and asymptotic distributions of these parameters are derived.

In this paper we introduce discrete-time semi-Markov random evolutions (DTSMREs) and study asymptotic properties, namely, averaging, diffusion approximation, and diffusion approximation with equilibrium by the martingale weak convergence method. The controlled DTSMREs are introduced and Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equations are derived for them. The applications here concern the additive functionals (AFs), geometric Markov renewal chains (GMRCs), and dynamical systems (DSs) in discrete time. The rates of convergence in the limit theorems for DTSMREs and AFs, GMRCs, and DSs are also presented.

Scaling of proposals for Metropolis algorithms is an important practical problem in Markov chain Monte Carlo implementation. Analyses of the random walk Metropolis for high-dimensional targets with specific functional forms have shown that in many cases the optimal scaling is achieved when the acceptance rate is approximately 0.234, but that there are exceptions. We present a general set of sufficient conditions which are invariant to orthonormal transformation of the coordinate axes and which ensure that the limiting optimal acceptance rate is 0.234. The criteria are shown to hold for the joint distribution of successive elements of a stationary pth-order multivariate Markov process.

In this paper we study limit theorems for the Feller game which is constructed from one-dimensional simple symmetric random walks, and corresponds to the St. Petersburg game. Motivated by a generalization of the St. Petersburg game which was investigated by Gut (2010), we generalize the Feller game by introducing the parameter α. We investigate limit distributions of the generalized Feller game corresponding to the results of Gut. Firstly, we give the weak law of large numbers for α=1. Moreover, for 0<α≤1, we have convergence in distribution to a stable law with index α. Finally, some limit theorems for a polynomial size and a geometric size deviation are given.