DocumentCode
1318779
Title
Generation of discrete distributions from biased coins
Author
Abrahams, Julia
Author_Institution
Math., Comput., & Inf. Sci., Office of Naval Res., Arlington, VA, USA
Volume
42
Issue
5
fYear
1996
fDate
9/1/1996 12:00:00 AM
Firstpage
1541
Lastpage
1546
Abstract
The procedure of Knuth and Yao (1976) to simulate random numbers with specified distribution by parsing sequences of fair coin tosses is generalized to employ discrete distributions of particular form instead of fair coins. Each probability in these distributions is an integral power of some fixed value t. The parse tree for the simulation procedure is closely related to the code trees arising in Karp´s optimal variable-length coding algorithm for code symbols of unequal cost
Keywords
encoding; probability; random number generation; statistical analysis; trees (mathematics); variable length codes; biased coins; code trees; discrete distributions; fair coin tosses; optimal variable-length coding algorithm; parse tree; parsing sequences; probability distribution; random number simulation; simulation procedure; unequal cost code symbols; Algorithm design and analysis; Application software; Arithmetic; Australia; Cost function; Information theory; Performance analysis; Power generation; Random number generation;
fLanguage
English
Journal_Title
Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on
Publisher
ieee
ISSN
0018-9448
Type
jour
DOI
10.1109/18.532895
Filename
532895
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