Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/ia/paper-2/10f/a/solution

For any fixed bin, each ball supplies an independent Bernoulli distribution indicator with success probability . Summing the indicator variables gives
The full occupancy vector has a multinomial distribution, the basic uniform balls-in-bins allocation. Distinct bin counts are not independent when and . To see this, write . For the same ball, if , while indicators from distinct balls are independent. Their covariance is therefore
With no balls the counts are deterministic; with one bin there are no distinct bin pairs. These degenerate cases do not contradict the conclusion.

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