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Balls in Boxes: Variations on a Theme of Warren Ewens and Herbert Wilf

2011/06/27 by Shalosh B. Ekhad, Doron Zeilberger, Ekhad, Shalosh B. +1
Mathematics · #FOS: Mathematics #Statistics Theory (math.ST) #math.ST #stat.TH

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1106.5531

13 pages; Dedicated to Herbert Saul Wilf on his 80th birthday

arxiv created 2011/06/27 · arxiv updated 2011/06/29

Abstract

We comment on, elaborate, and extend the work of Warren Ewens and Herbert Wilf, described in their http://www.pnas.org/content/104/27/11189.full.pdf about the maximum in balls-and-boxes problem. In particular we meta-apply their ingenious method to show that it is not really needed, and that one is better off using the so-called Poisson Approximation, at least in applications to the real world, because extremely unlikely events mever happen in real life. This article is accompanied by the Maple package http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/tokhniot/BallsInBoxes">BallsInBoxes.

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