Extreme value theory plays an important role in providing approximation results for the extremes of a sequence of independent random variables when their distribution is unknown. An important one is given by the generalised Pareto distribution $H_\gamma(x)$ as an approximation of the distribution $F_t(s(t)x)$ of the excesses over a threshold t, where s(t) is a suitable norming function. We study the rate of convergence of $F_t(s(t)\cdot)$ to $H_\gamma$ in variational and Hellinger distances and translate it into that regarding the Kullback–Leibler divergence between the respective densities.

Empirical point processes of exceedances play an important role in extreme value theory, and their limiting behaviour has been extensively studied. Here, we provide explicit bounds on the accuracy of approximating an exceedance process by a compound Poisson or Poisson cluster process, in terms of a Wasserstein metric that is generally more suitable for the purpose than the total variation metric. The bounds only involve properties of the finite, empirical sequence that is under consideration, and not of any limiting process. The argument uses Bernstein blocks and Lindeberg's method of compositions.

Empirical studies of data traffic in high-speed networks suggest that network traffic exhibits self-similarity and long-range dependence. Cumulative network traffic has been modeled using the so-called ON/OFF model. It was shown that cumulative network traffic can be approximated by either fractional Brownian motion or stable Lévy motion, depending on how many sources are active in the model. In this paper we consider exceedances of a high threshold by the sequence of lengths of ON-periods. If the cumulative network traffic converges to stable Lévy motion, the number of exceedances converges to a Poisson limit. The same holds in the fractional Brownian motion case, provided a very high threshold is used. Finally, we show that the number of exceedances obeys the central limit theorem.

We discuss the limits of point processes which are generated by a triangular array of rare events. Such point processes are motivated by the exceedances of a high boundary by a random sequence since exceedances are rare events in this case. This application relates the problem to extreme value theory from where the method is used to treat the asymptotic approximation of these point processes. The presented general approach extends, unifies and clarifies some of the various conditions used in the extreme value theory.