相关论文: On the Lottery Problem: Tracing Stefan Mandel's Co…

We study coverage processes in which each draw reveals a subset of $[n]$, and the goal is to determine the expected number of draws until all items are seen at least once. A classical example is the Coupon Collector's Problem, where each…

In this paper three unrelated problems will be discussed. What connects them is the rich methodology of classical probability theory. In the first two problems we have a complete answer to the problems raised; in the third case, what we…

Consider a finite positive integer. If it is even, divide it by 2, and if it is odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. This will give you a new integer. Following the procedure for the new integer, you will receive another integer. Repeat the…

Using standard methods (due to Janson, Stein-Chen, and Talagrand) from probabilistic combinatorics, we explore the following general theme: As one progresses from each member of a family of objects ${\cal A}$ being "covered" by at most one…

The following magic trick is at the center of this paper. While the audience writes the first ten terms of a Fibonacci-like sequence (the sequence following the same recursion as the Fibonacci sequence), the magician calculates the sum of…

A cornerstone of social choice theory is Condorcet's paradox which says that in an election where $n$ voters rank $m$ candidates it is possible that, no matter which candidate is declared the winner, a majority of voters would have…

We present a framework for analyzing the near miss effect in lotteries. A decision maker (DM) facing a lottery, falsely interprets losing outcomes that are close to winning ones, as a sign that success is within reach. As a result of this…

That there exist two losing games that can be combined, either by random mixture or by nonrandom alternation, to form a winning game is known as Parrondo's paradox. We establish a strong law of large numbers and a central limit theorem for…

Despite having been introduced in 1962 by C.L. Mallows, the combinatorial algorithm Patience Sorting is only now beginning to receive significant attention due to such recent deep results as the Baik-Deift-Johansson Theorem that connect it…

Lionel Levine's hat challenge has $t$ players, each with a (very large, or infinite) stack of hats on their head, each hat independently colored at random black or white. The players are allowed to coordinate before the random colors are…

We correct a 1957 combinatorial enumeration by the linguist J. Greenberg. The desired count, the Bell number B(25), supported using his Mass Comparison method for language classification. In 1987, he used this method to classify indigenous…

The problem of guessing subject to distortion is considered, and the performance of randomized guessing strategies is investigated. A one-shot achievability bound on the guessing moment (i.e., moment of the number of required queries) is…

Can a probabilistic gambler get arbitrarily rich when all deterministic gamblers fail? We study this problem in the context of algorithmic randomness, introducing a new notion -- almost everywhere computable randomness. A binary sequence…

Cerny's conjecture is a longstanding open problem in automata theory. We study two different concepts, which allow to approach it from a new angle. The first one is the triple rendezvous time, i.e., the length of the shortest word mapping…

The famous (3n + 1) or Collatz conjecture has admitted some progress over the last several decades towards the conclusion that the conjecture is true (i.e. that all Collatz sequences will eventually reach a value of one), but has stubbornly…

Rosenfeld in 1974 conjectured that there is an integer N > 8 such that every tournament of order n > N contains every non-directed cycle of order n. We prove that, with exactly 35 exceptions, every tournament of order n > 2 contains each…

In a casino where arbitrarily small bets are admissible, any betting strategy M can be modified into a savings strategy that, not only is successful on each casino sequence where M is (thus accumulating unbounded wealth inside the casino)…

Assume $n$ players are placed on the $n$ vertices of a graph $G$. The following game was introduced by Winkler: An adversary puts a hat on each player, where each hat has a colour out of $q$ available colours. The players can see the hat of…

One of the great pleasures of working with Imre Leader is to experience his infectious delight on encountering a compelling combinatorial problem. This collection of open problems in combinatorics has been put together by a subset of his…

Lottery is a game in which multiple players take chances in the hope of getting some rewards in cash or kind. In addition, from the time of the early civilizations, lottery has also been considered as an apposite method to allocate scarce…