Related papers: A Statistical Approach to Broken Stick Problems
Consider the fundamental problem of drawing a simple random sample of size k without replacement from [n] := {1, . . . , n}. Although a number of classical algorithms exist for this problem, we construct algorithms that are even simpler,…
We generalize the well-known broken stick problem in several ways, including a discrete "brick" analogue and a sequential "pick-up sticks/bricks" version. The limit behavior of the broken brick problem gives a combinatorial proof of the…
We consider uniformly random set partitions of size $n$ with exactly $k$ blocks, and uniformly random permutations of size $n$ with exactly $k$ cycles, under the regime where $n-k \sim t\sqrt{n}$, $t>0$. In this regime, there is a simple…
The aim of this note is to present a numerical method to solve the Stokes problem in a bounded domain with a Dirac source term, which preserves optimality for any approximation order by the finite-element method. It is based on the…
The basic random $k$-SAT problem is: Given a set of $n$ Boolean variables, and $m$ clauses of size $k$ picked uniformly at random from the set of all such clauses on our variables, is the conjunction of these clauses satisfiable? Here we…
Our object of study is the general class of stick-breaking processes with exchangeable length variables. These generalize well-known Bayesian non-parametric priors in an unexplored direction. We give conditions to assure the respective…
This work deals with the one-dimensional Stefan problem with a general time-dependent boundary condition at the fixed boundary. Stochastic solutions are obtained using discrete random walks, and the results are compared with analytic…
Consider a random permutation of $kn$ objects that permutes $n$ disjoint blocks of size $k$ and then permutes elements within each block. Normalizing its cycle lengths by $kn$ gives a random partition of unity, and we derive the limit law…
In this paper, we consider the problem of partitioning a small data sample drawn from a mixture of $k$ product distributions. We are interested in the case that individual features are of low average quality $\gamma$, and we want to use as…
Consider a string of $n$ positions, i.e. a discrete string of length $n$. Units of length $k$ are placed at random on this string in such a way that they do not overlap, and as often as possible, i.e. until all spacings between neighboring…
A major problem in evaluating stochastic local search algorithms for NP-complete problems is the need for a systematic generation of hard test instances having previously known properties of the optimal solutions. On the basis of…
The generation of random graphs using edge swaps provides a reliable method to draw uniformly random samples of sets of graphs respecting some simple constraints, e.g. degree distributions. However, in general, it is not necessarily…
Given a graph, the sparsest cut problem asks for a subset of vertices whose edge expansion (the normalized cut given by the subset) is minimized. In this paper, we study a generalization of this problem seeking for $ k $ disjoint subsets of…
We use Stein's method to obtain bounds on the rate of convergence for a class of statistics in geometric probability obtained as a sum of contributions from Poisson points which are exponentially stabilizing, i.e. locally determined in a…
We present two complementary proofs that, if the lengths of $n$ sticks are sampled at random, then the probability that no $p+1$ sticks can form a $(p+1)$-sided polygon can be expressed as the product of the reciprocals of a series of terms…
We introduce a stochastic version of the cutting-plane method for a large class of data-driven Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Optimization (MINLO) problems. We show that under very weak assumptions the stochastic algorithm is able to converge to…
Many separable nonlinear optimization problems can be approximated by their nonlinear objective functions with piecewise linear functions. A natural question arising from applying this approach is how to break the interval of interest into…
In the minimum $k$-cut problem, we want to find the minimum number of edges whose deletion breaks the input graph into at least $k$ connected components. The classic algorithm of Karger and Stein runs in $\tilde O(n^{2k-2})$ time, and…
We find a remarkable agreement between the statistics of a randomly divided interval and the observed statistical patterns and distributions found in horse racing betting markets. We compare the distribution of implied winning odds, the…
Given a set of $n$ weighted points on the $x$-$y$ plane, we want to find a step function consisting of $k$ horizontal steps such that the maximum vertical weighted distance from any point to a step is minimized. We solve this problem in…