Bennett inequality

If independent centered random variables satisfy $X_i\le b$ and ${\sum }_i\mathbb{E}{X}_i^2\le v$, then

For a binomial distribution with $p_n\to 0$ and $n{p}_n\to \infty$, the Bennett inequality at $C$ standard deviations tends to $2e^{-C^2/2}$, whereas the Hoeffding inequality tends to two. The raw Bennett inequality bound is eventually smaller for any fixed $C>0$; after clipping at one it is nontrivial in the limit only when $C>\sqrt{2\log 2}$.

The Bennett rate function has Taylor expansion $\varphi (u)=u^2/2-u^3/6+O(u^4)$ near zero. It is the optimized exponent in the Chernoff bound based on the moment-generating function estimate for the Bennett inequality.