Couplings for irregular combinatorial assemblies

When approximating the joint distribution of the component counts of a decomposable combinatorial structure that is `almost' in the logarithmic class, but nonetheless has irregular structure, it is useful to be able first to establish that the distribution of a certain sum of non-negative integer valued random variables is smooth. This distribution is not like the normal, and individual summands can contribute a non-trivial amount to the whole, so its smoothness is somewhat surprising. In this paper, we consider two coupling approaches to establishing the smoothness, and contrast the results that are obtained.