Related papers: How Many Rounds Should You Expect in Urn Solitaire…
Motivated by a problem in the theory of randomized search heuristics, we give a very precise analysis for the coupon collector problem where the collector starts with a random set of coupons (chosen uniformly from all sets). We show that…
In order to study how well a finite group might be generated by repeated random multiplications, P. Diaconis suggested the following urn model. An urn contains some balls labeled by elements which generate a group G. Two are drawn at random…
For the most general Polya urn schemes, we establish the almost sure convergence of its composition. The only requirement is that there are always enough balls of both colors, so that the extractions can be indefinitely pursued according to…
We revisit the game in which each of several players chooses a pattern and then a coin is flipped repeatedly until one of these patterns is generated. In particular, we demonstrate how to compute the probability of any one player winning…
We study an urn model introduced in the paper of Chen and Wei, where at each discrete time step $m$ balls are drawn at random from the urn containing colors white and black. Balls are added to the urn according to the inspected colors,…
We study a generalized P\'{o}lya urn model with two types of ball. If the drawn ball is red, it is replaced together with a black ball, but if the drawn ball is black it is replaced and a red ball is thrown out of the urn. When only black…
Consider an urn filled with balls, each labeled with one of several possible collective decisions. Now, let a random voter draw two balls from the urn and pick her more preferred as the collective decision. Relabel the losing ball with the…
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…
We consider a system of urns of Polya-type, with balls of two colors; the reinforcement of each urn depends both on the content of the same urn and on the average content of all urns. We show that the urns synchronize almost surely, in the…
A classical P\'olya urn scheme is a Markov process whose evolution is encoded by a replacement matrix $(R_{i,j})_{1\leq i,j\leq d}$. At every discrete time-step, we draw a ball uniformly at random, denote its colour $c$, and replace it in…
We study a system of interacting reinforced random walks defined on polygons. At each stage, each particle chooses an edge to traverse which is incident to its position. We allow the probability of choosing a given edge to depend on the sum…
A cyclic urn is an urn model for balls of types $0,\ldots,m-1$ where in each draw the ball drawn, say of type $j$, is returned to the urn together with a new ball of type $j+1 \mod m$. The case $m=2$ is the well-known Friedman urn. The…
We complete the study of the model introduced in [11]. It is a two-color urn model with multiple drawing and random (non-balanced) time-dependent reinforcement matrix. The number of sampled balls at each time-step is random. We identify the…
An urn containing specified numbers of balls of distinct ordered colors is considered. A multiple q-Polya urn model is introduced by assuming that the probability of q-drawing a ball of a specific color from the urn varies geometrically,…
A classical problem in statistics is estimating the expected coverage of a sample, which has had applications in gene expression, microbial ecology, optimization, and even numismatics. Here we consider a related extension of this problem to…
We consider P\'olya urns with infinitely many colours that are of a random walk type, in two related version. We show that the colour distribution a.s., after rescaling, converges to a normal distribution, assuming only second moments on…
This article describes a purely analytic approach to urn models of the generalized or extended P\'olya-Eggenberger type, in the case of two types of balls and constant ``balance,'' that is, constant row sum. The treatment starts from a…
A basic experiment in probability theory is drawing without replacement from an urn filled with multiple balls of different colours. Clearly, it is physically impossible to overdraw, that is, to draw more balls from the urn than it…
We study the joint asymptotics of forward and backward processes of numbers of non-empty urns in an infinite urn scheme. The probabilities of balls hitting the urns are assumed to satisfy the conditions of regular decrease. We prove weak…
We study a multiple-urn version of the Ehrenfest model. In this setting, we denote the n urns by Urn 1 to Urn n, where n>=2. Initially, M balls are randomly placed in the n urns. At each subsequent step, a ball is selected and put into the…