Coupon Collecting with Quotas

  • Russell May

Abstract

We analyze a variant of the coupon collector's problem, in which the probabilities of obtaining coupons and the numbers of coupons in a collection may be non-uniform. We obtain a finite expression for the generating function of the probabilities to complete a collection and show how this generalizes several previous results about the coupon collector's problem. Also, we provide applications about computational complexity and approximation.

Published
2008-08-18
Article Number
N31