A note on sum and difference of correlated chi-squared variables

Approximate distributions for sum and difference of linearly correlated chi2 distributed random variables are derived. It is shown that they can be reduced to conveniently parametrized gamma and Variance-Gamma distributions, respectively. The proposed distributions are very flexible, and the one for sum in particular has straight-forward generalizations to cases where multiple chi2 variables with different parameters are involved. The results promptly extend to every sum of gamma variables with common scale and to every difference between gamma variables with common shape and scale. The fit of the distributions is tested on simulated data with remarkable results.The approximations presented are expected to be especially useful to researchers working on gamma-distributed variables.