Histogram bin width selection for time-dependent Poisson processes

Abstract

In constructing a time histogram of the event sequences derived from a nonstationary point process, we wish to determine the bin width such that the mean squared error of the histogram from the underlying rate of occurrence is minimized. We find that the optimal bin widths obtained for a doubly stochastic Poisson process and a sinusoidally regulated Poisson process exhibit different scaling relations with respect to the number of sequences, time scale and amplitude of rate modulation, but both diverge under similar parametric conditions. This implies that under these conditions, no determination of the time-dependent rate can be made. We also apply the kernel method to these point processes, and find that the optimal kernels do not exhibit any critical phenomena, unlike the time histogram method.