Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Coupon collector's problem. In probability theory, the coupon collector's problem refers to mathematical analysis of "collect all coupons and win" contests. It asks the following question: if each box of a given product (e.g., breakfast cereals) contains a coupon, and there are n different types of coupons, what is the probability that more ...
Fountain code. In coding theory, fountain codes (also known as rateless erasure codes) are a class of erasure codes with the property that a potentially limitless sequence of encoding symbols can be generated from a given set of source symbols such that the original source symbols can ideally be recovered from any subset of the encoding symbols ...
In probability theory, the birthday problem asks for the probability that, in a set of n randomly chosen people, at least two will share a birthday. The birthday paradox refers to the counterintuitive fact that only 23 people are needed for that probability to exceed 50%. The birthday paradox is a veridical paradox: it seems wrong at first ...
Applications of the harmonic series and its partial sums include Euler's proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers, the analysis of the coupon collector's problem on how many random trials are needed to provide a complete range of responses, the connected components of random graphs, the block-stacking problem on how far over the edge ...
Component (graph theory) In graph theory, a component of an undirected graph is a connected subgraph that is not part of any larger connected subgraph. The components of any graph partition its vertices into disjoint sets, and are the induced subgraphs of those sets. A graph that is itself connected has exactly one component, consisting of the ...
It is stated that "[The coupon collector's problem] asks the following question: If each box of a brand of cereals contains a coupon, and there are n different types of coupons, what is the probability that more than t boxes need to be bought to collect all n coupons?" However, this question is not answered in the solution section.
Mannequins display the store's new spring fashions at a J.C. Penney store in Queens, New York. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)J.C. Penney's disastrous sales plunge under CEO Ron ...
In combinatorics, the twelvefold way is a systematic classification of 12 related enumerative problems concerning two finite sets, which include the classical problems of counting permutations, combinations, multisets, and partitions either of a set or of a number. The idea of the classification is credited to Gian-Carlo Rota, and the name was ...