Algorithms based on rapidly mixing Markov chains are discussed to produce nearly uniformly distributed random elements in abelian groups of finite order. Let A be an abelian group generated by set S. Then one can generate ε-nearly uniform random elements of A using 4|S| log(|A| /ε) log(|A|) additions and the same number of random bits.

This survey article describes a method for choosing uniformly at random from any finite set whose objects can be viewed as constituting a distributive lattice. The method is based on ideas of the author and David Wilson for using “coupling from the past” to remove initialization bias from Monte Carlo randomization. The article describes several applications to specific kinds of combinatorial ob...

Let G be a finite group of order g. A probability distribution Z on G is called ε-uniform if |Z(x) − 1/g| ≤ ε/g for each x ∈ G. If x1, x2, . . . , xm is a list of elements of G, then the random cube Zm := Cube(x1, . . . , xm) is the probability distribution where Zm(y) is proportional to the number of ways in which y can be written as a product x1 1 x ε2 2 · · · xεm m with each εi = 0 or 1. Let...

We present a “practical” algorithm to construct random elements of a finite group. We analyse its theoretical behaviour and prove that asymptotically it produces uniformly distributed tuples of elements. We discuss tests to assess its effectiveness and use these to decide when its results are acceptable for some matrix groups.

We prove that the limit of a sequence of Pettis integrable bounded scalarly measurable weak random elements, of finite weak norm, with values in the dual of a non-separable Banach space is Pettis integrable. Then we provide basic properties for the Pettis conditional expectation, and prove that it is continuous. Calculus of Pettis conditional expectations in general is very different from the c...

We consider random binary search trees when the input consists of a multiset, i.e. a set with multiple occurrences of equal elements, and prove that the randomized insertion and deletion algorithms produce random search trees regardless of multiplicities; even if all the elements are equal during the tree updates, a search tree will maintain its randomness. Thus, equal elements do not degenerat...