Card guessing and the birthday problem for sampling without replacement
Probability
2024-02-26 v1 Combinatorics
Abstract
Consider a uniformly random deck consisting of cards labelled by numbers from through , possibly with repeats. A guesser guesses the top card, after which it is revealed and removed and the game continues. What is the expected number of correct guesses under the best and worst strategies? We establish sharp asymptotics for both strategies. For the worst case, this answers a recent question of Diaconis, Graham, He and Spiro, who found the correct order. As part of the proof, we study the birthday problem for sampling without replacement using Stein's method.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2108.07355,
title = {Card guessing and the birthday problem for sampling without replacement},
author = {Jimmy He and Andrea Ottolini},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.07355},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
28 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Comments are welcome!