Serfozo, Richard F. Compound Poisson approximations for sums of random variables. (English) Zbl 0604.60016 Ann. Probab. 14, 1391-1398 (1986). We show that a sum of dependent random variables is approximately compound Poisson when the variables are rarely nonzero and, given they are nonzero, their conditional distributions are nearly identical. We give several upper bounds on the total-variation distance between the distribution of such a sum and a compound Poisson distribution. Included is an example for Markovian occurrences of a rare event. Our bounds are consistent with those that are known for Poisson approximations for sums of uniformly small random variables. Cited in 15 Documents MSC: 60E15 Inequalities; stochastic orderings 60F99 Limit theorems in probability theory 60J10 Markov chains (discrete-time Markov processes on discrete state spaces) Keywords:total-variation distance; compound Poisson distribution; Poisson approximations for sums of uniformly small random variables × Cite Format Result Cite Review PDF Full Text: DOI