The Bernoulli sieve

The Bernoulli Sieve Revisited

We consider an occupancy scheme in which “balls” are identified with n points sampled from the standard exponential distribution, while the role of “boxes” is played by the spacings induced by an independent random walk with positive and nonlattice steps. We discuss the asymptotic behavior of five quantities: the index K n of the last occupied box, the number Kn of occupied boxes, the number Kn...

The Bernoulli sieve: an overview

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 re...

Small parts in the Bernoulli sieve

Sampling from a random discrete distribution induced by a ‘stick-breaking’ process is considered. Under a moment condition, it is shown that the asymptotics of the sequence of occupancy numbers, and of the small-parts counts (singletons, doubletons, etc) can be read off from a limiting model involving a unit Poisson point process and a self-similar renewal process on the halfline.

Sieve Methods Lecture Notes, Part I the Brun-hooley Sieve

A sieve is a technique for bounding the size of a set after the elements with “undesirable properties” (usually of a number theoretic nature) have been removed. The undesirable properties could be divisibility by a prime from a given set, other multiplicative constraints (divisibility by a perfect square for example) or inclusion in a set of residue classes. The methods usually involve some kin...

The Brun-hooley Sieve