An approximation to the convolution of gamma distributions

Abstract

In general, the exact distribution of a convolution of independent gamma random variables is quite complicated and does not admit a closed form. Of all the distributions proposed, the gamma-series representation of Moschopoulos (1985) is relatively simple to implement but for particular combinations of scale and/or shape parameters the computation of the weights of the series can result in complications with too much time consuming to allow a large-scale application. Recently, a compact random parameter representation of the convolution has been proposed by Vellaisamy and Upadhye (2009) and it allows to give an exact interpretation to the weights of the series. They describe an infinite discrete probability distribution. This result suggested to approximate Moschopoulos’s expression looking for an approximating theoretical discrete distribution for the weights of the series. More precisely, we propose a general negative binomial distribution. The result is an “excellent” approximation, fast and simple to implement for any parameter combination.

Keywords:

• Convolution gamma distributions
• Generalized negative binomial distribution
• p-values
• Simulation

Mathematics Subject Classification:

• 62E17
• 60E05