Card guessing and the birthday problem for sampling without replacement

Card guessing and the birthday problem for sampling without replacement

Consider a uniformly random deck consisting of cards labelled by numbers from 1 through n, possibly with repeats. A guesser guesses the top card, after which it is revealed and removed and the game continues. What is the expected number of correct guesses under the best and worst strategies? We esta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Annals of applied probability Vol. 33; no. 6B; p. 5208
Main Authors: He, Jimmy, Ottolini, Andrea
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Hayward Institute of Mathematical Statistics 01-12-2023
Subjects:
Asymptotic methods
Mathematical problems
Probability
Sampling
Sampling techniques
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Summary:Consider a uniformly random deck consisting of cards labelled by numbers from 1 through n, possibly with repeats. A guesser guesses the top card, after which it is revealed and removed and the game continues. What is the expected number of correct guesses under the best and worst strategies? We establish sharp asymptotics for both strategies. For the worst case, this answers a recent question of Diaconis, Graham, He and Spiro, who found the correct order. As part of the proof, we study the birthday problem for sampling without replacement using Stein's method.
ISSN:1050-5164
2168-8737
DOI:10.1214/23-AAP1946