Related papers: Daniel Litt's Probability Puzzle
In this short article, we present a solution to one of the probability puzzles that Daniel Litt, a mathematician at the University of Toronto, posted on his X account earlier this year. The main goal of this note is to show how some of the…
We present an analysis of a coin-tossing problem posed by Daniel Litt which has generated some popular interest. We demonstrate a recursive identity which leads to relatively simple formulas for the excess number of wins for one player over…
In this article the idea of random variables over the set theoretic universe is investigated. We explore what it can mean for a random set to have a specific probability of belonging to an antecedently given class of sets.
Urn models play an important role to express various basic ideas in probability theory. Here we extend this urn model with tubes. An urn contains coloured balls, which can be drawn with probabilities proportional to the numbers of balls of…
We consider an urn model with multiple drawing and random time-dependent addition matrix. The model is very general with respect to previous literature: the number of sampled balls at each time-step is random, the addition matrix has…
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…
In this note we show that any proof of Wallis's formula or of the probability integral formula proves both assertions.
This is a short survey on existing upper and lower bounds on the probability of the union of a finite number of events using partial information given in terms of the individual or pairwise event probabilities (or their sums). New proofs…
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…
In this paper, we survey some recent results on the Artin conjecture and discuss some aspects for the Artin conjecture.
The Monty Hall puzzle has been solved and dissected in many ways, but always using probabilistic arguments, so it is considered a probability puzzle. In this paper the puzzle is set up as an orthodox statistical problem involving an unknown…
In Probabilistic Logic Nilsson uses the device of a probability distribution over a set of possible worlds to assign probabilities to the sentences of a logical language. In his paper Nilsson concentrated on inference and associated…
A certain sampling process, concerning an urn with balls of two colors, proposed in 1965 by B.E. Oakley and R.L. Perry, and discussed by Peter Winkler and Martin Gardner, that has an extremely simple answer for the probability, namely the…
On March 16, 2024, Daniel Litt, in an X-post, proposed the following brainteaser: "Flip a fair coin 100 times. It gives a sequence of heads (H) and tails (T). For each HH in the sequence of flips, Alice gets a point; for each HT, Bob does,…
We consider in this paper an urn and ball problem with replacement, where balls are with different colors and are drawn uniformly from a unique urn. The numbers of balls with a given color are i.i.d. random variables with a heavy tailed…
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…
Consider an urn containing balls labeled with integer values. Define a discrete-time random process by drawing two balls, one at a time and with replacement, and noting the labels. Add a new ball labeled with the sum of the two drawn…
We sketch a process algebra with data and probability distributions. This allows to combine two very powerful abstraction mechanisms namely non-deterministic choice and probabilities. However, it is not clear how to define an appropriate…
A fair coin is flipped $n$ times, and two finite sequences of heads and tails (words) $A$ and $B$ of the same length are given. Each time the word $A$ appears in the sequence of coin flips, Alice gets a point, and each time the word $B$…
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,…