Saddlepoint approximations

The saddlepoint method provides accurate approximations for the distributions of many test statistics, estimators and for important probabilities arising in various stochastic models. The saddlepoint approximation is a large deviations technique which is substantially more accurate than limiting normal or Edgeworth approximations, especially in presence of very small sample sizes or very small probabilities. The outstanding accuracy of the saddlepoint approximation can be explained by the fact that it has bounded relative error.