Related papers: How Many Rounds Should You Expect in Urn Solitaire…
We use death processes and embeddings into continuous time in order to analyze several urn models with a diminishing content. In particular we discuss generalizations of the pill's problem, originally introduced by Knuth and McCarthy, and…
Suppose that $k$ runners having different constant speeds run laps on a circular track of unit length. The Lonely Runner Conjecture states that, sooner or later, any given runner will be at distance at least $1/k$ from all the other…
We propose a generalized Ehrenfest urn model of many urns arranged periodically along a circle. The evolution of the urn model system is governed by a directed stochastic operation. Method for solving an $N$-ball, $M$-urn problem of this…
An urn model of Diaconis and some generalizations are discussed. A convergence theorem is proved that implies for Diaconis' model that the empirical distribution of balls in the urn converges with probability one to the uniform…
We study a game in which one keeps flipping a coin until a given finite string of heads and tails occurs. We find the expected number of coin flips to end the game when the ending string consists of at most four maximal runs of heads or…
A comparison of escape rates from one and from two holes in an experimental container (e.g. a laser trap) can be used to obtain information about the dynamics inside the container. If this dynamics is simple enough one can hope to obtain…
In a balls-in-bins process with feedback, balls are sequentially thrown into bins so that the probability that a bin with n balls obtains the next ball is proportional to f(n) for some function f. A commonly studied case where there are two…
The problem of creating a three-sided dice with the probability of it landing on each of its sides being equal to 1/3 has been around for many years. Various approaches have been attempted, but as different authors achieved at different…
We study several variants of the classical card game war. As anyone who played this game knows, the game can take some time to terminate, but it usually does. Here, we analyze a number of asymptotic variants of the game, where the number of…
We consider a generalized two-color Polya urn (black and withe balls) first introduced by Hill, Lane, Sudderth where the urn composition evolves as follows: let $\pi:\left[0,1\right]\rightarrow\left[0,1\right]$, and denote by $x_{n}$ the…
Assume that $2n$ balls are thrown independently and uniformly at random into $n$ bins. We consider the unlikely event $E$ that every bin receives at least one ball, showing that $\Pr[E] = \Theta(b^n)$ where $b \approx 0.836$. Note that, due…
In this paper, we consider a new type of urn scheme, where the selection probabilities are proportional to a weight function, which is linear but decreasing in the proportion of existing colours. We refer to it as the \emph{negatively…
The prospects of Kahneman and Tversky, Mega Million and Powerball lotteries, St. Petersburg paradox, premature profits and growing losses criticized by Livermore are reviewed under an angle of view comparing mathematical expectations with…
Let $\pi_n$ be a uniformly chosen random permutation on $[n]$. The authors of [2] showed that the expected number of distinct consecutive patterns of all lengths $k\in\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ in $\pi_n$ was $\frac{n^2}{2}(1-o(1))$ as $n\to\infty$,…
Given a finite connected graph $G$, place a bin at each vertex. Two bins are called a pair if they share an edge of $G$. At discrete times, a ball is added to each pair of bins. In a pair of bins, one of the bins gets the ball with…
We derive a recursive formula for the moments of the number of flips using a possibly biased coin to produce a prescribed finite binary string $S$ when $S$ is either a run of heads or a run of heads followed by a tails. Our recursive…
Many real-world voting systems consist of voters that occur in just two different types. Indeed, each voting system with a {\lq\lq}House{\rq\rq} and a {\lq\lq}Senat{\rq\rq} is of that type. Here we present structural characterizations and…
Consider a random graph G in G(n,p) and the graph property: G contains a copy of a specific graph H. (Note: H depends on n; a motivating example: H is a Hamiltonian cycle.) Let q be the minimal value for which the expected number of copies…
This note examines a problem in enumerative and asymptotic combinatorics involving the classical structure of integer compositions. What is sought is an analysis on average and in distribution of the length of the longest run of consecutive…
We consider the 2-dimensional random matching problem in $\mathbb{R}^2.$ In a challenging paper, Caracciolo et. al. arXiv:1402.6993 on the basis of a subtle linearization of the Monge Ampere equation, conjectured that the expected value of…