English

Sampling from a mixture of different groups of coupons

Probability 2018-11-13 v2

Abstract

A collector samples coupons with replacement from a pool containing gg \textit{uniform} groups of coupons, where "uniform group" means that all coupons in the group are equally likely to occur. For each j=1,,gj = 1, \dots, g let TjT_j be the number of trials needed to detect Group jj, namely to collect all MjM_j coupons belonging to it at least once. We derive an explicit formula for the probability that the ll-th group is the first one to be detected (symbolically, P{Tl=j=1gTj}P\{T_l = \bigwedge_{j=1}^g T_j\}). We also compute the asymptotics of this probability in the case g=2g=2 as the number of coupons grows to infinity in a certain manner. Then, in the case of two groups we focus on T:=T1T2T := T_1 \vee T_2, i.e. the number of trials needed to collect all coupons of the pool (at least once). We determine the asymptotics of E[T]E[T] and V[T]V[T], as well as the limiting distribution of TT (appropriately normalized) as the number of coupons becomes very large.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.04500,
  title  = {Sampling from a mixture of different groups of coupons},
  author = {Aristides V. Doumas and Vassilis G. Papanicolaou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.04500},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

36 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T21:42:23.205Z