The aim of this paper is to show that some of the known properties of distributions in the domain of attraction of a stable law have counterparts for distributions which are stochastically compact in the sense of Feller. This enables us to unify the ideas of Feller and Doeblin, who first studied the concept of stochastic compactness, and give new characterizations of stochastic compactness and the domain of attraction of the normal distribution.

The main purpose of the paper is to give necessary and sufficient conditions for the almost sure boundedness of (Sn – αn)/B(n), where Sn = X1 + X2 + … + XmXi being independent and identically distributed random variables, and αnand B(n) being centering and norming constants. The conditions take the form of the convergence or divergence of a series of a geometric subsequence of the sequence P(Sn − αn > a B(n)), where a is a constant. The theorem is distinguished from previous similar results by the comparative weakness of the subsidiary conditions and the simplicity of the calculations. As an application, a law of the iterated logarithm general enough to include a result of Feller is derived.

We extend the results obtained by Hines and Thompson for a Markov chain which has a single reflecting barrier at the origin, nearest neighbour transitions and which moves from {j} to {j + l} with probability j/(j + 1). Martingale limit theorems are used to work out an asymptotic theory for a general class of such chains for which the probability above has the form l – λ(j) = O>λ(j)>1 (j ∈N),λ(j)→ O (j →∞)and Σλ(j)=∞ We discuss the case where the last sum is finite and some alternative versions of the general case.

For a distribution function F on [0, ∞] we say F ∈ if {1 – F(2)(x)}/{1 – F(x)}→2 as x→∞, and F∈, if for some fixed γ > 0, and for each real , limx→∞ {1 – F(x + y)}/{1 – F(x)} ═ e– n. Sufficient conditions are given for the statement F ∈ F * G ∈ and when both F and G are in y it is proved that F*G∈pF + 1(1 – p) G ∈ for some (all) p ∈(0,1). The related classes ℒt are proved closed under convolutions, which implies the closure of the class of positive random variables with regularly varying tails under multiplication (of random variables). An example is given that shows to be a proper subclass of ℒ 0.

A recent result of Rogozin on the relative stability of a distribution function is extended, by giving equivalences for relative stability in terms of truncated moments of the distribution and in terms of the real and imaginary parts of the characteristic function. As an application, the known results on centering distributions in the domain of attraction of a stable law are extended to the case of stochastically compact distributions.

Salem and Zygmund (1947, 1948), Baker (1972) and Dudley (1975) have shown that certain lacunary sets P of characters of a compact abelian group have sequences of the form where фk∈P converge to the normal distribution if suitably normalized. In this paper, a theorem of probability due to McLeish (1974) is applied to clarify and extend the previous results.

Let T be a continuous t-norm (a suitable binary operation on[0, 1]) and Δ + the space of distribution functions which are concertratede on [0,∞. theτT product of any F, G in Δ+ is defined at any real x by , and the pair (Δ+, τT) forms a semigroup. Thus, given a sequence {Fi} in Δ+, the n-fold product τT(F1 … Fn) is well-defined for each n. Moreover, that resulting sequence {τT(F1, …, Fn)} is pointwise non-increasing and hence has a weak limit. This paper establishes a convergence theorem which yields a representation for this weak limit. In addition, we prove the Zero-One law that, for Archimedean t-norms, the weak limit is either identically zero or has supremum 1.

An early extension of Lindeberg's central limit theorem was Bernstein's (1939) discovery of necessary and sufficient conditions for the convergence of moments in the central limit theorem. Von Bahr (1965) made a study of some asymptotic expansions in the central limit theorem, and obtained rates of convergence for moments. However, his results do not in general imply that the moments converge. Some better rates have been obtained by Bhattacharya and Rao for moments between the second and third. In this paper we give improved rates of convergence for absolute moments between the third and fourth.