Poisson process and

poisson processprobabilityvariance

Consider Poisson process $T_n$, such that:

  • $T_0=0$
  • $0<T_1<T_2<T_3<\ldots$.

$T_n$ is time of $n$ th occurence (one year is the unit of measure).

Let $\overline{T}_n=\frac{1}{n} \sum_\limits{k=1}^{n}T_k$.

How to calculate: $Var(\overline{T}_5|T_5\le 1<T_6)$?

I think of it in that way:

  • $T_n$ is Gamma distributed with parameter $(n,\lambda)$
  • Sum of Gamma is Gamma: $\sum_\limits{k=1}^{n}T_k $~Gamma($\frac{n(n+1)}{2},\lambda)$
  • and finally $\overline{T}_n$~Gamma$(\frac{n(n+1)}{2},n\lambda)$

But I can't finish it.. Please help me 🙂

Best Answer

Some general comments:

First of all let's clear up some apparent confusion. The process $(T_n)_{n \geq 1}$ you (incorrectly) refer to as a Poisson process is really the arrival times (or jump times) of the $n$-th arrival for $n\geq 1$. A Poisson process is a counting process indexed in continuous time, $(N_t)_{t\geq 0}$ and takes (non-negative) integer values. The process $(T_n)$ is instead indexed in discrete time $(n=1,2,\dotsc)$ and takes continuous values in $(0,\infty)$. They are related by the formula, $\mathbb{P}(N_t \geq n)=\mathbb{P}(T_n \leq t)$, or in English, the probability of having greater than $n$ arrivals by time $t$ is equal to the probability that the time of the $n$-th arrival is less than $t$.

Now, you correctly identify the distribution of $T_n \sim \Gamma(n,\lambda)$. Recall, the inter-arrival times of a Poisson process form an IID sequence of exponential RVs with rate $\lambda$, call it $(W_i)_{i \geq 1}$. The arrival times are related by $T_n=W_1+\dotsc+W_n$. The inter-arrival times are independent of each other by the memoryless property of exponential distribution. The arrival times are not—the arrival time of the $(n+1)$-th arrival depends on how long it took to see the $n$-th, $T_{n+1}=W_{n+1}+T_n$, no?

So, your claim that $T_1+\dotso+T_n$ is $\Gamma(n(n+1)/2,\lambda)$ is false since this only holds for independent $(T_n)$. Note, that $T_{n}$ and $T_{n+m}-T_{n}$ are independent for $n,m$ and the latter is distributed like $T_{m}$. So the joint distribution of $(T_n, T_{n+m})$ has density $f_{T_n}(t) \cdot f_{T_m}(s-t)\mathbb{1}_{0<t<s}$.

Sketch of solution:

Consider time at $t=1$. First note, $\{T_5 \leq 1 < T_6\}=\{N_1=5\}$. That is, conditional on $T_5 \leq 1$, we know that $N_1 \geq 5$, i.e. at least $5$ arrivals have occurred. Further, given that $T_6>1$, we know that $6$-th arrival has not occurred yet, i.e. $N_1<6$. Since $N_t$ is integer valued, there is only one choice—we are really conditioning on the event that $N_1=5$. A useful and well known fact (e.g. on wikipedia) is that conditional on the number of arrivals in a time interval for a given Poisson process, the jump times are the order statistics of uniformly distributed RVs. Now, just follow your nose :)

Related Question