Related papers: The Probability Distribution for Draws Until First…
We consider weighted negatively reinforced urn schemes with finitely many colours. An urn scheme is called negatively reinforced, if the selection probability for a colour is proportional to the weight $w$ of the colour proportion, where…
We discuss several tests for whether a given set of independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) draws does not come from a specified probability density function. The most commonly used are Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, particularly…
Consider $n$ independent random numbers with a uniform distribution on $[0,1]$. The number of them that exceed their mean is shown to have an Eulerian distribution, i.e., it is described by the Eulerian numbers. This is related to, but…
The prediction of the final state probabilities of a general cuboid randomly thrown onto a surface is a problem that naturally arises in the minds of men and women familiar with regular cubic dice and the basic concepts of probability.…
Competing urns refers to the random experiment where m balls are dropped, randomly and independently, into urns 1,...,n. Formally, we have a random map $\sigma$ from {1,...,m} to {1,...,n} with the $\sigma(i)$'s i.i.d. With $x_j$ the…
Adaptive randomly reinforced urn (ARRU) is a two-color urn model where the updating process is defined by a sequence of non-negative random vectors $\{(D_{1,n}, D_{2,n});n\geq1\}$ and randomly evolving thresholds which utilize accruing…
The paper deals with the problem of finding the best alternatives on the basis of pairwise comparisons when these comparisons need not be transitive. In this setting, we study a reinforcement urn model. We prove convergence to the optimal…
In "Recognizing the Maximum of a Sequence", Gilbert and Mosteller analyze a full information game where n measurements from an uniform distribution are drawn and a player (knowing n) must decide at each draw whether or not to choose that…
A certain sampling process, concerning an urn with balls of two colors, proposed in 1965 by B.E. Oakley and R.L. Perry, and discussed by Peter Winkler and Martin Gardner, that has an extremely simple answer for the probability, namely the…
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…
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…
Consider a P\'olya urn where a drawn ball of colour $i$ is replaced together with a fixed number $m_i$ of balls of the same colour. We give a simple proof that if, for example, there are two colours and the urn starts with more balls of…
There have been several popular reports of various groups exploiting the deterministic nature of the game of roulette for profit. Moreover, through its history the inherent determinism in the game of roulette has attracted the attention of…
In this paper we consider a sequence of n coin tosses, whose outcome depends on the previous n-1 tosses. In particular, their distribution is not i.i.d. We compute the limiting distribution of this sequence using the method of images.
A famous (and hard) chess problem asks what is the maximum number of safe squares possible in placing $n$ queens on an $n\times n$ board. We examine related problems from placing $n$ rooks. We prove that as $n\to\infty$, the probability…
Consider a uniformly random deck consisting of cards labelled by numbers from $1$ through $n$, possibly with repeats. A guesser guesses the top card, after which it is revealed and removed and the game continues. What is the expected number…
In the standard formulation of the occupancy problem one considers the distribution of r balls in n cells, with each ball assigned independently to a given cell with probability 1/n. Although closed form expressions can be given for the…
In a prophet inequality problem, $n$ independent random variables are presented to a gambler one by one. The gambler decides when to stop the sequence and obtains the most recent value as reward. We evaluate a stopping rule by the…
In computational social choice, the distortion of a voting rule quantifies the degree to which the rule overcomes limited preference information to select a socially desirable outcome. This concept has been investigated extensively, but…
In probability theory, there is a tendency to treat one random variable with a given distribution as being just as good as any other. By and large this is fine because probability is (mostly) concerned with distributional properties of…