Related papers: Balls and Bins -- Simple Concentration Bounds
Backoff algorithms are used in many distributed systems where multiple devices contend for a shared resource. For the classic balls-into-bins problem, the number of singletons -- those bins with a single ball -- is important to the analysis…
In the classical balls-and-bins paradigm, where $n$ balls are placed independently and uniformly in $n$ bins, typically the number of bins with at least two balls in them is $\Theta(n)$ and the maximum number of balls in a bin is…
Consider a balls-in-bins process in which each new ball goes into a given bin with probability proportional to f(n), where n is the number of balls currently in the bin and f is a fixed positive function. It is known that these so-called…
Imagine that there are two bins to which balls are added sequentially, and each incoming ball joins a bin with probability proportional to the p-th power of the number of balls already there. A general result says that if p>1/2, there…
We provide a relatively simple proof that the expected gap between the maximum load and the average load in the two choice process is bounded by $(1+o(1))\log \log n$, irrespective of the number of balls thrown. The theorem was first proven…
Balls and bins models are classical probabilistic models where balls are added to bins at random according to a certain rule. The balls and bins model with feedback is a non-linear generalisation of the P\'olya urn, where the probability of…
We introduce a new class of balanced allocation processes which bias towards underloaded bins (those with load below the mean load) either by skewing the probability by which a bin is chosen for an allocation (probability bias), or…
Suppose $k$ balls are dropped into $n$ boxes independently with uniform probability, where $n, k$ are large with ratio approximately equal to some positive real $\lambda$. The maximum box count has a counterintuitive behavior: first of all,…
We consider the following balls-into-bins process with $n$ bins and $m$ balls: each ball is equipped with a mutually independent exponential clock of rate 1. Whenever a ball's clock rings, the ball samples a random bin and moves there if…
We use the holonomic ansatz to estimate the asymptotic behavior, in $T$, of the average maximal number of balls in a bin that is obtained when one throws uniformly at random (without replacement) $r$ balls into $n$ bins, $T$ times. Our…
In the standard ball-in-bins experiment, a well-known scheme is to sample $d$ bins independently and uniformly at random and put the ball into the least loaded bin. It can be shown that this scheme yields a maximum load of $\log\log n/\log…
We introduce a new class of balanced allocation processes which are primarily characterized by ``filling'' underloaded bins. A prototypical example is the Packing process: At each round we only take one bin sample, if the load is below the…
This paper explores the distribution of indistinguishable balls into distinct urns with varying capacity constraints, a foundational issue in combinatorial mathematics with applications across various disciplines. We present a comprehensive…
Simple random coverage models, well studied in Euclidean space, can also be defined on a general compact metric space. By analogy with the geometric models, and with the discrete coupon collector's problem and with cover times for finite…
We study a higher-dimensional 'balls-into-bins' problem. An infinite sequence of i.i.d. random vectors is revealed to us one vector at a time, and we are required to partition these vectors into a fixed number of bins in such a way as to…
We analyze the asymptotic behavior of the average maximal number of balls in a bin obtained by throwing uniformly at random $r$ balls without replacement into $n$ bins, $T$ times. Writing the expected maximum as $\frac{r}{n}T+…
We consider the sequential allocation of $m$ balls (jobs) into $n$ bins (servers) by allowing each ball to choose from some bins sampled uniformly at random. The goal is to maintain a small gap between the maximum load and the average load.…
We explore the fundamental limits of distributed balls-into-bins algorithms. We present an adaptive symmetric algorithm that achieves a bin load of two in log* n+O(1) communication rounds using O(n) messages in total. Larger bin loads can…
We revisit the random allocation model in which $n$ balls are independently placed into $N$ boxes with probabilities $q_1,\ldots,q_N$. A classical asymptotic result due to Kolchin, Sevastyanov, and Chistyakov for the expectations,…
In the classical Polya urn problem, one begins with $d$ bins, each containing one ball. Additional balls arrive one at a time, and the probability that an arriving ball is placed in a given bin is proportional to $m^\gamma$, where $m$ is…