Related papers: The equalization probability of the Polya urn
Urn models play an important role to express various basic ideas in probability theory. Here we extend this urn model with tubes. An urn contains coloured balls, which can be drawn with probabilities proportional to the numbers of balls of…
We show how to simulate a roll of a fair $n$-sided die by one flip of a biased coin with probability $1/n$ of coming up heads, followed by $3\lfloor\log_2 n \rfloor+1$ flips of a fair coin.
We study the number of white balls in a classical P\'olya urn model with the additional feature that, at random times, a black ball is added to the urn. The number of draws between these random times are i.i.d. and, under certain moment…
We study an urn process with two urns, initialized with a ball each. Balls are added sequentially, the urn being chosen independently with probability proportional to the $\alpha^{th}$ power $(\alpha >1)$ of the existing number of balls. We…
Given $n$ colored balls, we want to detect if more than $\lfloor n/2\rfloor$ of them have the same color, and if so find one ball with such majority color. We are only allowed to choose two balls and compare their colors, and the goal is to…
We show that the supremum of the successive percentages of red balls in P\'olya's urn model is almost surely rational, give the set of values that are taken with positive probability and derive several exact distributional results for the…
Sufficient conditions are developed for a class of generalized Polya urn schemes ensuring exchangeability. The extended class includes the Blackwell-MacQueen Polya urn and the urn schemes for the two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet process and…
Suppose you and your friend both do $n$ tosses of an unfair coin with probability of heads equal to $\alpha$. What is the behavior of the probability that you obtain at least $d$ more heads than your friend if you make $r$ additional…
This paper considers a two-color, single-draw urn model with two types of balls, denoted type $1$ and type $2$, with initial counts $Y^1_0\in N^+$ and $Y^2_0\in N^+$, respectively. At each discrete time step, a ball is drawn uniformly at…
It is well known that in a small P\'olya urn, i.e., an urn where second largest real part of an eigenvalue is at most half the largest eigenvalue, the distribution of the numbers of balls of different colours in the urn is asymptotically…
What is the average number of tosses needed before a particular sequence of heads and tails turns up? We solve the problem didactically, starting with doubles, finding that a tail, followed by a head, turns up on the average after only four…
The $k$-majority game is played with $n$ numbered balls, each coloured with one of two colours. It is given that there are at least $k$ balls of the majority colour, where $k$ is a fixed integer greater than $n/2$. On each turn the player…
Consider the following probability puzzle: A fair coin is flipped n times. For each HT in the resulting sequence, Bob gets a point, and for each HH Alice gets a point. Who is more likely to win? We provide a proof that Bob wins more often…
We prove an easy but very weak version of Chernoff inequality. Namely, that the probability that in $6M$ throws of a fair coin, one gets at most $M$ heads is $\leq 1/2^M$.
We consider the urn setting with two different objects, ``good'' and ``bad'', and analyze the number of draws without replacement until a good object is picked. Although the expected number of draws for this setting is a standard textbook…
This paper develops an analytic theory for the study of some Polya urns with random rules. The idea is to extend the isomorphism theorem in Flajolet et al. (2006), which connects deterministic balanced urns to a differential system for the…
We study a P\'olya-type urn model defined as follows. Start at time 0 with a single ball of some colour. Then, at each time n>0, choose a ball from the urn uniformly at random. With probability 1/2<p<1, return the ball to the urn along with…
P\'{o}lya urn is a stochastic process in which balls are randomly drawn from an urn of red and blue balls, and balls of the same color as the drawn balls are added. The probability of a ball of a certain color being drawn is equal to the…
If the product of two monic polynomials with real nonnegative coefficients has all coefficients equal to 0 or 1, does it follow that all the coefficients of the two factors are also equal to 0 or 1? Here is an equivalent formulation of this…
Consider $n$ independent, biased coins, each with a known probability of heads. Presented with an ordering of these coins, flip (i.e., toss) each coin once, in that order, until we have observed both a *head* and a *tail*, or flipped all…