The paper is concerned with the classical occupancy scheme with infinitely many boxes, in which $n$ balls are thrown independently into boxes $1,2,...$, with probability $p_j$ of hitting the box $j$, where $p_1\geq p_2\geq...>0$ and $\sum_{j=1}^\infty p_j=1$. We establish joint normal approximation as $n\to\infty$ for the numbers of boxes containing $r_1,r_2,...,r_m$ balls, standardized in the natural way, assuming only that the variances of these counts all tend to infinity. The proof of this approximation is based on a de-Poissonization lemma. We then review sufficient conditions for the variances to tend to infinity. Typically, the normal approximation does not mean convergence. We show that the convergence of the full vector of $r$-counts only holds under a condition of regular variation, thus giving a complete characterization of possible limit correlation structures.
We consider an infinite balls-in-boxes occupancy scheme with boxes organised in nested hierarchy, and random probabilities of boxes defined in terms of iterated fragmentation of a unit mass. We obtain a multivariate functional limit theorem for the cumulative occupancy counts as the number of balls approaches infinity. In the case of fragmentation driven by a homogeneous residual allocation model our result generalises the functional central limit theorem for the block counts in Ewens' and more general regenerative partitions.
In this paper, we consider the occupancy distribution for an open network of infinite server queues with multivariate batch arrivals following a non-homogeneous Poisson process, and general service time distributions. We derive a probability generating function for the transient occupancy distribution of the network, and prove that it is necessary and sufficient for ergodicity that the expected occupancy time for each batch be finite. Further, we recover recurrence relations for the transient probability mass function formulated in terms of a distribution obtained by compounding the batch size…
We investigate a special case of infinite urn schemes first considered by Karlin (1967), especially its occupancy and odd-occupancy processes. We first propose a natural randomization of these two processes and their decompositions. We then establish functional central limit theorems, showing that each randomized process and its components converge jointly to a decomposition of certain self-similar Gaussian process. In particular, the randomized occupancy process and its components converge jointly to the decomposition of a time-changed Brownian motion $\mathbb B(t^α), α\in(0,1)$, and the rand…
The paper concerns the classical occupancy scheme with infinitely many boxes. We establish approximations to the distributions of the number of occupied boxes, and of the number of boxes containing exactly r balls, within the family of translated Poisson distributions. These are shown to be of ideal asymptotic order, with respect both to total variation distance and to the approximation of point probabilities. The proof is probabilistic, making use of a translated Poisson approximation theorem of Röllin (2005).
This paper collects facts about the number of occupied boxes in the classical balls-in-boxes occupancy scheme with infinitely many positive frequencies: equivalently, about the number of species represented in samples from populations with infinitely many species. We present moments of this random variable, discuss asymptotic relations among them and with related random variables, and draw connections with regular variation, which appears in various manifestations.
We investigate the randomized Karlin model with parameter $β\in(0,1)$, which is based on an infinite urn scheme. It has been shown before that when the randomization is bounded, the so-called odd-occupancy process scales to a fractional Brownian motion with Hurst index $β/2\in(0,1/2)$. We show here that when the randomization is heavy-tailed with index $α\in(0,2)$, then the odd-occupancy process scales to a $(β/α)$-self-similar symmetric $α$-stable process with stationary increments.
Laws of the iterated and single logarithm for sums of independent indicators, with applications to the Ginibre point process and Karlin's occupancy scheme
A nested occupancy scheme in random environment is a generalization of the classical Karlin infinite balls-in-boxes occupancy scheme in random environment (with random probabilities). Unlike the Karlin scheme in which the collection of boxes is unique, there is a nested hierarchy of boxes, and the hitting probabilities of boxes are defined in terms of iterated fragmentation of a unit mass. In the present paper we assume that the random fragmentation law is given by stick-breaking in which case the infinite occupancy scheme defined by the first level boxes is known as the Bernoulli sieve. Assum…
Motivated by demand prediction for the custodial prison population in England and Wales, this paper describes an approach to the study of service systems using infinite server queues, where the system has non-empty initial state and the elapsed time of individuals initially present is not known. By separating the population into initial content and new arrivals, we can apply several techniques either separately or jointly to those sub-populations, to enable both short-term queue length predictions and longer-term considerations such as managing congestion and analysing the impact of potential …
A nested Karlin's occupancy scheme is a symbiosis of classical Karlin's balls-in-boxes scheme and a weighted branching process. To define it, imagine a deterministic weighted branching process in which weights of the first generation individuals are given by the elements of a discrete probability distribution. For each positive integer $j$, identify the $j$th generation individuals with the $j$th generation boxes. The collection of balls is one and the same for all generations, and each ball starts at the root of the weighted branching process tree and moves along the tree according to the fol…
An occupancy problem with an infinite number of bins and a random probability vector for the locations of the balls is considered. The respective sizes of bins are related to the split times of a Yule process. The asymptotic behavior of the landscape of first empty bins, i.e., the set of corresponding indices represented by point processes, is analyzed and convergences in distribution to mixed Poisson processes are established. Additionally, the influence of the random environment, the random probability vector, is analyzed. It is represented by two main components: an i.i.d. sequence and a fi…
We study the infinite urn scheme when the balls are sequentially distributed over an infinite number of urns labelled 1,2,... so that the urn $j$ at every draw gets a ball with probability $p_j$, $\sum_j p_j=1$. We prove functional central limit theorems for discrete time and the poissonised version for the urn occupancies process, for the odd-occupancy and for the missing mass processes extending the known non-functional central limit theorems.
Consider $n$ players whose "scores" are independent and identically distributed values $\{X_i\}_{i=1}^n$ from some discrete distribution $F$. We pay special attention to the cases where (i) $F$ is geometric with parameter $p\to0$ and (ii) $F$ is uniform on $\{1,2,...,N\}$; the latter case clearly corresponds to the classical occupancy problem. The quantities of interest to us are, first, the $U$-statistic $W$ which counts the number of "ties" between pairs $i,j$; second, the univariate statistic $Y_r$, which counts the number of strict $r$-way ties between contestants, i.e., episodes of the fo…
The Bernoulli sieve is a version of the classical balls-in-boxes occupancy scheme, in which random frequencies of infinitely many boxes are produced by a multiplicative random walk, also known as the residual allocation model or stick-breaking. We give an overview of the limit theorems concerning the number of boxes occupied by some balls out of the first $n$ balls thrown, and present some new results concerning the number of empty boxes within the occupancy range.
The Bernoulli sieve is an infinite occupancy scheme obtained by allocating the points of a uniform $[0,1]$ sample over an infinite collection of intervals made up by successive positions of a multiplicative random walk independent of the uniform sample. We prove a law of the iterated logarithm for the number of non-empty (occupied) intervals as the size of the uniform sample becomes large.
Threshold-type counts based on multivariate occupancy models with log concave marginals admit bounded size biased couplings under weak conditions, leading to new concentration of measure results for random graphs, germ-grain models in stochastic geometry, multinomial allocation models and multivariate hypergeometric sampling. The work generalizes and improves upon previous results in a number of directions.
Let $(p_k)_{k\in\mathbb{N}}$ be a discrete probability distribution for which the counting function $x\mapsto \#\{k\in\mathbb{N}: p_k\geq 1/x\}$ belongs to the de Haan class $Π$. Consider a deterministic weighted branching process generated by $(p_k)_{k\in\mathbb{N}}$. A nested Karlin's occupancy scheme is the sequence of Karlin balls-in-boxes schemes in which boxes of the $j$th level, $j=1,2,\ldots$ are identified with the $j$th generation individuals and the hitting probabilities of boxes are identified with the corresponding weights. The collection of balls is the same for all generations, …
The Bernoulli sieve is the infinite "balls-in-boxes" occupancy scheme with random frequencies $P_k=W_1...W_{k-1}(1-W_k)$, where $(W_k)_{k\in\mn}$ are independent copies of a random variable $W$ taking values in $(0,1)$. Assuming that the number of balls equals $n$, let $L_n$ denote the number of empty boxes within the occupancy range. The paper proves that, under a regular variation assumption, $L_n$, properly normalized without centering, weakly converges to a functional of an inverse stable subordinator. Proofs rely upon the observation that $(\log P_k)$ is a perturbed random walk. In partic…
The inductive size bias coupling technique and Stein's method yield a Berry-Esseen theorem for the number of urns having occupancy $d \ge 2$ when $n$ balls are uniformly distributed over $m$ urns. In particular, there exists a constant $C$ depending only on $d$ such that $$ \sup_{z \in \mathbb{R}}|P(W_{n,m} \le z) -P(Z \le z)| \le C \left( \frac{1+(\frac{n}{m})^3}{σ_{n,m}} \right) \quad \mbox{for all $n \ge d$ and $m \ge 2$,} $$ where $W_{n,m}$ and $σ_{n,m}^2$ are the standardized count and variance, respectively, of the number of urns with $d$ balls, and $Z$ is a standard normal random variab…
We study a class of countably-infinite-dimensional linear programs (CILPs) whose feasible sets are bounded subsets of appropriately defined spaces of measures. The optimal value, optimal points, and minimal points of these CILPs can be approximated by solving finite-dimensional linear programs. We show how to construct finite-dimensional programs that lead to approximations with easy-to-evaluate error bounds, and we prove that the errors converge to zero as the size of the finite-dimensional programs approaches that of the original problem. We discuss the use of our methods in the computation …
