Toward the History of the Saint Petersburg School of Probability and Statistics. I. Limit Theorems for Sums of Independent Random Variables

• Published in: Vestnik, St. Petersburg University. Mathematics St. Petersburg University. Mathematics, 2018-04, Vol.51 (2), p.144-163
• Main Authors: Lifshits, M. A., Nikitin, Ya. Yu, Petrov, V. V., Zaitsev, A. Yu, Zinger, A. A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Approximation; Central limit theorem; Independent variables; Mathematical analysis; Mathematics; Mathematics and Statistics; Normal distribution; Probability theory; Random variables; Sequences; Sums; Theorems
• ISSN: 1063-4541; 1934-7855
• DOI: 10.3103/S1063454118020115

This is the first in a series of reviews devoted to the scientific achievements of the Leningrad–St. Petersburg school of probability and statistics in the period from 1947 to 2017. It is devoted to limit theorems for sums of independent random variables—a traditional subject for St. Petersburg. It refers to the classical limit theorems: the law of large numbers, the central limit theorem, and the law of the iterated logarithm, as well as important relevant problems formulated in the second half of the twentieth century. The latter include the approximation of the distributions of sums of independent variables by infinitely divisible distributions, estimation of the accuracy of strong Gaussian approximation of such sums, and the limit theorems on the weak almost sure convergence of empirical measures generated by sequences of sums of independent random variables and vectors.