2017/03/06 by Christian Berthet, Berthet, Christian
Computer Science · Mathematics · #Bayesian Methods and Mixture Models #Discrete Mathematics (cs.DM) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Markov Chains and Monte Carlo Methods #Mathematical functions and polynomials
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1703.01886
openalex publication_date 2017/03/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper gives an algebraic proof of the correctness of Von Schelling formula for the probability of the coupon collector problem waiting time for non-uniform distributions and partial collections. It introduces a theorem on sums of powers of subset probabilities which to our knowledge is new. A set of binomial coefficients is used as a basis for decomposition of these sums of powers.