4.II.26J

Applied Probability
Part II, 2006

(a) Let (Nt)t0\left(N_{t}\right)_{t \geqslant 0} be a Poisson process of rate λ>0\lambda>0. Let pp be a number between 0 and 1 and suppose that each jump in (Nt)\left(N_{t}\right) is counted as type one with probability pp and type two with probability 1p1-p, independently for different jumps and independently of the Poisson process. Let Mt(1)M_{t}^{(1)} be the number of type-one jumps and Mt(2)=NtMt(1)M_{t}^{(2)}=N_{t}-M_{t}^{(1)} the number of type-two jumps by time tt. What can you say about the pair of processes (Mt(1))t0\left(M_{t}^{(1)}\right)_{t \geqslant 0} and (Mt(2))t0\left(M_{t}^{(2)}\right)_{t \geqslant 0} ? What if we fix probabilities p1,,pmp_{1}, \ldots, p_{m} with p1++pm=1p_{1}+\ldots+p_{m}=1 and consider mm types instead of two?

(b) A person collects coupons one at a time, at jump times of a Poisson process (Nt)t0\left(N_{t}\right)_{t \geqslant 0} of rate λ\lambda. There are mm types of coupons, and each time a coupon of type jj is obtained with probability pjp_{j}, independently of the previously collected coupons and independently of the Poisson process. Let TT be the first time when a complete set of coupon types is collected. Show that

P(T<t)=j=1m(1epjλt)\mathbb{P}(T<t)=\prod_{j=1}^{m}\left(1-e^{-p_{j} \lambda t}\right)

Let L=NTL=N_{T} be the total number of coupons collected by the time the complete set of coupon types is obtained. Show that λET=EL\lambda \mathbb{E} T=\mathbb{E} L. Hence, or otherwise, deduce that EL\mathbb{E} L does not depend on λ\lambda.