English

Friedman vs P\'olya

Probability 2026-01-06 v2

Abstract

Suppose an urn contains initially any number of balls of two colours. One ball is drawn randomly and then put back with α\alpha balls of the same colour and β\beta balls of the opposite colour. Both cases, β=0\beta=0 and β>0\beta>0 are well known and correspond respectively to P\'olya's and Friedman's replacement schemes. We consider a mixture of both of these: with probability p(0,1]p\in(0,1] balls are replaced according to Friedman's recipe and with probability 1p1-p according to the one by P\'olya. Independently of the initial urn composition and independently of α\alpha, β\beta, and the value of p>0p>0, we show that the proportion of balls of one colour converges almost surely to 12\frac12. The latter is the limit behaviour obtained by using Friedman's scheme alone, i.e. when p=1p=1. Our result follows by adapting an argument due to D. S. Ornstein.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.16768,
  title  = {Friedman vs P\'olya},
  author = {Raphael Alves and Rafael A. Rosales},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.16768},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

4 pages, 1 figure, corrected minor typos

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:54:52.381Z