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The Coupon Collector's Brother

Probability 2020-05-13 v2

Abstract

A popular variant of the collector's problem is the following: Assume there are NN different types of coupons with equal occurring probabilities. There is one main collector who collects coupons. When she gets a "double," she gives it to her younger brother. Hence, when the main collector completes her collection, her brother's album will still have, say, UNU_N empty spaces. We show that, as NN \to \infty, the limiting distribution of UN/lnNU_N/\ln N is exponential with parameter 11.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.05270,
  title  = {The Coupon Collector's Brother},
  author = {Vassilis G. Papanicolaou and Aristides V. Doumas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.05270},
  year   = {2020}
}

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8 pages