Related papers: The clumsy coupon collector's problem
We propose a new method, probabilistic divide-and-conquer, for improving the success probability in rejection sampling. For the example of integer partitions, there is an ideal recursive scheme which improves the rejection cost from…
It is known that, by accounting for the multiboson interferences up to a finite order, the output distribution of noisy Boson Sampling, with distinguishability of bosons serving as noise, can be approximately sampled from in a time…
An {\it Omnibus Sequence} of length $n$ is one that has each possible "message" of length $k$ embedded in it as a subsequence. We study various properties of Omnibus Sequences in this paper, making connections, whenever possible, to the…
The standard central limit theorem with a Gaussian attractor for the sum of independent random variables may lose its validity in presence of strong correlations between the added random contributions. Here, we study this problem for…
Empirical studies of scientific discovery---so-called Eurekometrics---have indicated that the output of exploration proceeds as a logistic growth curve. Although logistic functions are prevalent in explaining population growth that is…
The last success problem is an optimal stopping problem that aims to maximize the probability of stopping on the last success in a sequence of independent $n$ Bernoulli trials. In the classical setting where complete information about the…
The Coin Change problem, also known as the Change-Making problem, is a well-studied combinatorial optimization problem, which involves minimizing the number of coins needed to make a specific change amount using a given set of coin…
We consider a supercritical general branching population where the lifetimes of individuals are i.i.d. with arbitrary distribution and each individual gives birth to new individuals at Poisson times independently from each others. The…
The change-making problem asks: given a positive integer $v$ and a collection $C$ of integer coin values $c_1=1<c_2< c_3< \cdots< c_n$, what is the minimum number of coins needed to represent $v$ with coin values from $C$? For some coin…
The compound decision problem for a vector of independent Poisson random variables with possibly different means has half a century old solution. However, it appears that the classical solution needs smoothing adjustment even when there are…
We address a well-known problem in combinatorics involving the identification of counterfeit coins with a systematic approach. The methodology can be applied to cases where the total number of coins is exceedingly large such that brute…
This note describes an algorithm for enumerating all the elements in a finite set based on uniformly random sampling from the set. This algorithm can be used for enumeration by fair sampling with quantum annealing. Our algorithm is based on…
Given a set of coins arranged in a line, we remove heads-up coins one at a time and flip any adjacent coins after each removal. The coin-removal problem is to determine for which arrangements of coins it is possible to remove all of the…
The Central Limit Theorem states that, in the limit of a large number of terms, an appropriately scaled sum of independent random variables yields another random variable whose probability distribution tends to a stable distribution. The…
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…
The gambler's ruin problem for correlated random walks (CRW), both with and without delays, is addressed using the Optional Stopping Theorem for martingales. We derive closed-form expressions for the ruin probabilities and the expected game…
We investigate the probability density of rescaled sums of iterates of deterministic dynamical systems, a problem relevant for many complex physical systems consisting of dependent random variables. A Central Limit Theorem (CLT) is only…
We give optimal solutions to all versions of the popular counterfeit coin problem obtained by varying whether (i) we know if the counterfeit coin is heavier or lighter than the genuine ones, (ii) we know if the counterfeit coin exists,…
Quantum walks behave differently from what we expect and their probability distributions have unique structures. They have localization, singularities, a gap, and so on. Those features have been discovered from the view point of mathematics…
We consider the problem of choosing the best of $n$ samples, out of a large random pool, when the sampling of each member is associated with a certain cost. The quality (worth) of the best sample clearly increases with $n$, but so do the…