Consider the classical coupon-collector's problem in which items of m distinct types arrive in sequence. An arriving item is installed in system i ≥ 1 if i is the smallest index such that system i does not contain an item of the arrival's type. We study the expected number of items in system j at the moment when system 1 first contains an item of each type

The aim of this paper is to define the entropy of a finite semi-Markov process. We define the entropy of the finite distributions of the process, and obtain explicitly its entropy rate by extending the Shannon–McMillan–Breiman theorem to this class of nonstationary continuous-time processes. The particular cases of pure jump Markov processes and renewal processes are considered. The relative entropy rate between two semi-Markov processes is also defined.

We derive the asymptotic joint normality, by a martingale approach, for the numbers of upper records, lower records and inversions in a random sequence.

This paper considers a competing risks system with p pieces of software where each piece follows the model by Littlewood (1980) described as follows. The failure rate of a piece of software relies on the residual number of bugs remaining in the software where each bug produces failures at varying rates. In effect, bugs with higher failure rates tend to be observed earlier in the testing period. Tasks are assigned to the system and the task completion times as well as the software failure times are assumed to be independent of each other. The system is observed over a fixed testing period and the system reliability upon test termination is examined. An estimator of the system reliability is presented and its asymptotic properties as well as finite-sample properties are obtained.

We study the existence of moments and the tail behavior of the densities of storage processes. We give sufficient conditions for existence and nonexistence of moments using the integrability conditions of submultiplicative functions with respect to Lévy measures. We then study the asymptotical behavior of the tails of these processes using the concave or convex envelope of the release rate function.

We consider a generalized stochastic epidemic on a Bernoulli random graph. By constructing the epidemic and graph in unison, the epidemic is shown to be a randomized Reed–Frost epidemic. Hence, the exact final-size distribution and extensive asymptotic results can be derived.

We consider the policy in a finite dam in which the input of water is formed by a compound Poisson process and the rate of water release is changed instantaneously from a to M and from M to a (M > a) at the moments when the level of water exceeds λ and downcrosses τ (λ > τ) respectively. After assigning costs to the changes of release rate, a reward to each unit of output, and a cost related to the level of water in the reservoir, we determine the long-run average cost per unit time.

In this paper, the generalized burn-in and replacement model considered by Cha (2001) is further extended to the case in which the probability of Type II failure is time dependent. Two burn-in procedures are considered and they are compared in cases when both the procedures are applicable. Under some mild conditions on the failure rate function r(t) and the Type II failure probability function p(t), the problems of determining optimal burn-in time and optimal replacement policy are considered.

In this paper, we study the classification of matrix GI/M/1-type Markov chains with a tree structure. We show that the Perron–Frobenius eigenvalue of a Jacobian matrix provides information for classifying these Markov chains. A fixed-point approach is utilized. A queueing application is presented to show the usefulness of the classification method developed in this paper.

We find the explicit value of perpetual American put options in the constant elasticity of variance model using the concept of smooth fit. We show that the price is increasing in the volatility and convex in the underlying stock price. Moreover, as the model converges to the standard Black and Scholes model, the value of the put is shown to approach the ‘correct’ limit.

We investigate the limit distributions associated with cost measures in Sattolo's algorithm for generating random cyclic permutations. The number of moves made by an element turns out to be a mixture of 1 and 1 plus a geometric distribution with parameter ½, where the mixing probability is the limiting ratio of the rank of the element being moved to the size of the permutation. On the other hand, the raw distance traveled by an element to its final destination does not converge in distribution without norming. Linearly scaled, the distance converges to a mixture of a uniform and a shifted product of a pair of independent uniforms. The results are obtained via randomization as a transform, followed by derandomization as an inverse transform. The work extends analysis by Prodinger.

Stochastic monotonicity properties for various classes of queueing networks have been established in the literature mainly with the use of coupling constructions. Miyazawa and Taylor (1997) introduced a class of batch-arrival, batch-service and assemble-transfer queueing networks which can be thought of as generalized Jackson networks with batch movements. We study conditions for stochastic domination within this class of networks. The proofs are based on a certain characterization of the stochastic order for continuous-time Markov chains, written in terms of their associated intensity matrices.

A recent paper by Lin and Stoyanov is devoted to the moment problem for geometrically compounded sums. The aim of this note is to provide affirmative answers to their conjectures.

This paper presents a degree-two probability lower bound for the union of an arbitrary set of events in an arbitrary probability space. The bound is designed in terms of the first-degree Bonferroni summation and pairwise joint probabilities of events, which are represented as weights of edges in a Hamilton-type circuit in a connected graph. The proposed lower bound strengthens the Dawson–Sankoff lower bound in the same way that Hunter and Worsley's degree-two upper bound improves the degree-two Bonferroni-type optimal upper bound. It can be applied to statistical inference in time series and outlier diagnoses as well as the study of dose response curves.

This paper introduces a rather general class of stationary continuous-time processes with long memory by randomizing the time-scale of short-memory processes. In particular, by randomizing the time-scale of continuous-time autoregressive and moving-average processes, many power-law decay and slow decay correlation functions are obtained.