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An asymptotically Gaussian bound on the Rademacher tails

Probability 2017-01-17 v3 Statistics Theory Statistics Theory

Abstract

An explicit upper bound on the tail probabilities for the normalized Rademacher sums is given. This bound, which is best possible in a certain sense, is asymptotically equivalent to the corresponding tail probability of the standard normal distribution, thus affirming a longstanding conjecture by Efron. Applications to sums of general centered uniformly bounded independent random variables and to the Student test are presented.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1007.2137,
  title  = {An asymptotically Gaussian bound on the Rademacher tails},
  author = {Iosif Pinelis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1007.2137},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

The discussion and references are expanded; the proofs of Lemmas 2.2 and 2.3 are simplified