The general birthday problem

  • Authors:

  • Lars Holst

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Mathematics, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

  • Venue:
  • Random Structures & Algorithms
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

The general birthday problem with unlike birth probabilities and the waiting time N until c people with the same birthday have been obtained is studied in this article. It is shown that N is stochastically largest when the birth probabilities are equal. By embedding in Poisson processes it is shown how the moments of N can be expressed in moments of the minimum of gamma random variables. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.