For a rate- Poisson process, keeping every second arrival gives a renewal process with independent interarrival times equal to sums of two exponential waiting times. Put . Its count mean and variance are and . The variance is strictly smaller than the mean for : sixteen times their difference has derivative and is zero at zero, because . Therefore this process is not a Cox process.
Neyman-Scott process 2026-10-14
A Neyman-Scott process places independent offspring clusters around points of a Poisson parent process, with an independently drawn offspring count and displacements. Poisson offspring counts make the offspring process conditionally Poisson given the parents, and therefore give a Cox process. Arbitrary offspring counts need not have that property.
For , let be the probability law of a seed displacement from its tree. For the literal circular support, it is normalized arclength on . The conditional mean measure of a point process is
We prove the conditional Poisson assertion directly by joint probability generating functions.
Fix disjoint bounded measurable sets . For a tree at , put and . Conditional on its seed count, the allocation among these sets and their complement is multinomial distribution. Averaging over the Poisson seed count gives
Thus this tree contributes independent Poisson counts of means to the disjoint sets. Different trees contribute independently. Only trees within distance of the bounded union of the can contribute, and there are almost surely finitely many of them. Multiplying their probability generating functions gives
This is precisely the joint probability generating function of independent Poisson counts with the displayed means. Also is locally finite, because each bounded set can receive seeds from only finitely many trees. This proves the conditional Poisson point process assertion and the Poisson offspring clusters directed by their parent process construction.
In arclength notation the directing measure is , where is arclength on the circle centered at . If “circle” is used to mean the filled disc instead, take ; then
The generating-function proof and the following unconditional conclusion hold for either reading. The circular version has a singular conditional directing measure, giving the random directing measure of a Cox process formulation.
Unconditionally this is a Cox process, specifically a Poisson-offspring Neyman-Scott process. Its mean measure of a point process is nevertheless spatially uniform. With , the Campbell first-moment formula and translation invariance give
since . Uniform mean alone does not establish a Poisson law.
For a bounded set of positive area, the conditional count has mean and variance . The law of total variance gives
A Poisson integral of a deterministic function has variance : for a simple function on disjoint sets this follows from independent Poisson counts, and square-integrable approximation gives the general formula. Here and it has bounded support, so
The strict inequality holds when , because implies . A Poisson random variable has equal mean and variance. Hence the unconditional process is not a Poisson process in the nontrivial model. If or , there are no seeds and the process is the degenerate empty Poisson process. The overdispersion of nondegenerate mixed Poisson counts quantifies the additional clustering induced by the random parents.
Put , finite almost surely. Conditional on the intensity process, is Poisson with mean and variance . The law of total expectation and law of total variance give
Consequently for a Cox process,
These identities apply when the moments are finite; if the mean is finite but the integrated intensity has infinite variance, the count variance is infinite and the inequality still holds.
A Cox process can be directed by a random locally finite measure, which need not have a density. Conditional counts in disjoint sets are independent Poisson variables with that measure's masses. Uniform circular offspring displacements give a directing measure supported on random circles; its unconditional mean can still be a multiple of planar Lebesgue measure. A random intensity function is the special case in which the directing measure is absolutely continuous.
Draw one random variable , taking values zero and two with equal probabilities. Conditional on , generate a Poisson point process on the real line with constant rate . This is a Cox process directed by the random measure : the same rate is shared by every window. It is a locally finite simple point process and a stationary point process. The law of total expectation gives ; the law of total variance and law of total covariance give, for bounded Borel sets with ,
The conditional covariance vanishes by independence, but the shared conditional means fluctuate together. This distinguishes conditional from unconditional independence.[ref]
For a window of length , the exact probability mass function is
In particular, its void probability functional is , compared with for the unit-rate Poisson point process. Whole realizations can be empty or comparatively crowded, while their mean density remains one. This example demonstrates shared-rate statistical dependence, rather than a model of short-range offspring clusters.