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We consider the following variant of the classic collector's problem: The family of coupon probabilities is the mixing of two subfamilies one of which is the \textit{uniform} family, while the other belongs to the well known \textit{Zipf…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-04-23 Aristides V. Doumas , Vassilis G. Papanicolaou

The "double Dixie cup problem" of D.J. Newman and L. Shepp (1960) is a well-known variant of the coupon collector's problem, where the object of study is the number $T_{m}(N)$ of coupons that a collector has to buy in order to complete $m$…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-11-06 Aristides V. Doumas , Vassilis G. Papanicolaou

This Ph.D. thesis concerns the version of the classical coupon collector's problem, when a collector samples with replacement a set of $n\ge 2$ distinct coupons so that at each time any one of the $n$ coupons is drawn with the same…

Probability · Mathematics 2010-07-27 Anna Pósfai

A collector samples coupons with replacement from a pool containing $g$ \textit{uniform} groups of coupons, where "uniform group" means that all coupons in the group are equally likely to occur. For each $j = 1, \dots, g$ let $T_j$ be the…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-11-13 Aristides V. Doumas , Vassilis G. Papanicolaou

We consider a generalisation of the classical coupon collector's problem, in which at each time step a collector either receives a new copy of a randomly chosen coupon, or loses all their previously collected copies of that coupon. We…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-05-15 Luke J. Attrill , Timothy M. Garoni

The Coupon Collector Problem (CCP) is a well-known combinatorial problem that seeks to estimate the number of random draws required to complete a collection of $n$ distinct coupon types. Various generalizations of this problem have been…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Hadas Abraham , Ido Feldman , Eitan Yaakobi

In this note we evaluate the expected waiting time to complete a collection of coupons, in the case of coupons which arrives in groups of constant size, independently and with unequal probabilities. As an application we will be able to…

Probability · Mathematics 2012-10-08 Marco Ferrante , Nadia Frigo

We generalize the well-known Coupon Collector Problem (CCP) in combinatorics. Our problem is to find the minimum and expected number of draws, with replacement, required to recover $n$ distinctly labeled coupons, with each draw consisting…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Andrew Tan , Oriel Limor , Daniella Bar-Lev , Ryan Gabrys , Zohar Yakhini , Paul H. Siegel

This paper provides analysis to a generalized version of the coupon collector problem, in which the collector gets $d$ distinct coupons each run and she chooses the one that she has the least so far. On the asymptotic case when the number…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2019-07-10 Weiyu Xu , Ao Kevin Tang

In this note, we introduce a distributed twist on the classic coupon collector problem: a set of $m$ collectors wish to each obtain a set of $n$ coupons; for this, they can each sample coupons uniformly at random, but can also meet in…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-12-14 Dan Alistarh , Peter Davies

The following variant of the collector's problem has attracted considerable attention relatively recently (see, e.g., N. Pintacuda 1980, D. Foata H. Guo-Niu and B. Lass 2001, D. Foata and D. Zeilberger 2003, I. Adler, S. Oren and S. Ross…

Probability · Mathematics 2014-12-16 Aristides V. Doumas , Vassilis G. Papanicolaou

We study in this paper a generalized coupon collector problem, which consists in analyzing the time needed to collect a given number of distinct coupons that are drawn from a set of coupons with an arbitrary probability distribution. We…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-04-16 Emmanuelle Anceaume , Yann Busnel , Ernst Schulte-Geers , Bruno Sericola

The double Dixie cup problem of D.J. Newman and L. Shepp is a well-known variant of the coupon collector problem, where the object of study is the number of coupons that a collector has to buy in order to complete m sets of all N existing…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-10-31 Aristides V. Doumas

Consider the coupon collector problem where each box of a brand of cereal contains a coupon and there are n different types of coupons. Suppose that the probability of a box containing a coupon of a specific type is $1/n$ and that we keep…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-06-13 J. C. Saunders

The article explores the asymptotic behavior of the expected number of drawings in the Coupon Collector's Problem with group-drawing under the uniform distribution. In this variant, each draw consists of a package of $s$ distinct coupons…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Daniel Berend , Tomer Sher

Motivated by applications in bioinformatics, we consider the word collector problem, i.e. the expected number of calls to a random weighted generator of words of length $n$ before the full collection is obtained. The originality of this…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2012-04-18 Jérémie Du Boisberranger , Danièle Gardy , Yann Ponty

We extend the classical coupon collector's problem to one in which two collectors are simultaneously and independently seeking collections of $d$ coupons. We find, in finite terms, the probability that the two collectors finish at the same…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Amy N. Myers , Herbert S. Wilf

This paper is about the Coupon collector's problem. There are some coupons, or baseball cards, or other plastic knick-knacks that are put into bags of chips or under soda bottles, etc. A collector starts collecting these trinkets and wants…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-03-11 Rohit Pandey

In this note we evaluate the expectation and variance of the waiting time to complete $m$ parallel collections of coupons, in the case of coupons which arrives independently, one by one and with equal probabilities.

Probability · Mathematics 2016-09-15 Marco Ferrante , Alessia Tagliavini

A popular variant of the collector's problem is the following: Assume there are $N$ 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…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-05-13 Vassilis G. Papanicolaou , Aristides V. Doumas
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