This paper presents a saddlepoint approximation to the cumulative distribution function of a random vector. The proposed approximation has accuracy comparable to that of existing expansions valid in two dimensions, and may be applied to random vectors of arbitrary length, subject only to the requirement that the distribution approximated either have a density or be confined to a lattice, and have a cumulant generating function. The result is derived by directly inverting the multivariate moment generating function. The result is applied to sufficient statistics from a regression model with exponential errors, and compared to an existing method in two dimensions. The result is also applied to multivariate inference from a data set arising from a case-control study of endometrial cancer.

The two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Anderson–Darling tests assess the hypothesis that two given samples come from the same population. In this paper, the power of each test was measured using a variety of alternative distributions and varying the sample size. Recommendations for the more powerful test for each common distribution are given, depending on whether the distribution has heavy or light tails.

We evaluate the performance of various bootstrap methods for constructing confidence intervals for mean and median of several common distributions. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we assessed performance by looking at coverage percentages and average confidence interval lengths. Poor performance is characterized by coverage deviating from 0.95 and large confidence interval lengths. Undercoverage is of greater concern than overcoverage. We also assess the performance of bootstrap methods in estimating the parameters of the Cox Proportional Hazard model and Accelerated Failure Time model.

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