Explicit Gamma-Stein Bounds for Satterthwaite's Approximation

Abstract

We derive explicit Gamma--Stein bounds for the Satterthwaite approximation of weighted sums of independent chi-square random variables and, more generally, of independent Gamma random variables. The approximating Gamma distribution is chosen by matching the first two moments. Our approach relies on new kernel representations of the solution to the Gamma--Stein equation and of its first derivatives on the positive real line. These representations yield weighted Stein-factor bounds adapted to the moment-matching structure and show that the quality of the approximation is controlled directly by the discrepancies between the individual scale parameters and the matched scale parameter. Kolmogorov bounds are obtained by smoothing. The results provide quantitative guarantees for the widely used Satterthwaite approximation and are applied to pooled variances, sample variances of stationary Gaussian time series, Wishart traces and sums of Wishart traces, and high-dimensional repeated-measures statistics.