In this paper, we consider a two color multi-drawing urn model. At each discrete time step, we draw uniformly at random a sample of balls and note their color, they will be returned to the urn together with a random number of balls depending on the sample’s composition. The replacement rule is a 2 × 2 matrix depending on bounded discrete positive random variables. Using a stochastic approximation algorithm and martingales methods, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the urn after many draws.
1. Introduction
The classical Pólya urn was introduced by Pólya and Eggenberger [7] describing contagious diseases. The first model is as follows: An urn contains balls of two colors at the start, white and blue. At each step, one picks a ball randomly and returns it to the urn with a ball of the same color. Afterwards, there were many generalizations and urn model become a simple tool to describe several models such finance, clinical trials (see [19,22]), biology (see [11]), computer sciences, internet (see [8,18]), etc...
Recently, Mahmoud, Chen, Wei, Kuba and Sulzbach [4,5,12–15], have focused on the multi-drawing urn. Instead of picking a ball,one picks a sample of balls (), say white and blue balls. The pick is returned back to the urn together with white and blue balls, where and are integers. At first, they treated two particular cases when {} and when { and }, where is a positive constant. By different methods as martingales and moment methods, the authors described the asymptotic behavior of the urn composition. When considering the general case and in order to ensure the existence of a martingale, they supposed that , the number of white balls in the urn after draws, satisfies the affinity condition i.e, there exist two deterministic sequences and such that, for all , . Under this condition, the authors focused on small and large index urns. Later, the affinity condition was removed in the work of Lasmer, Mailler and Selmi [16], they generalized this model and looked at the case of more than two colors.
This paper contains the first results about multi drawing Pólya urns with random replacement rule. Even in the classical Pólya urn, where one ball is picked at every time step very few results cover the unbalanced case: exceptions are the works of Janson and Aguech. In [9] Janson studied a generalized urn model containing different colors () with a replacement matrix with random entries such that and for all . Janson considered the case when the mean of is an irreducible matrix. Using the method of embedding in continuous time of Athrea and Karlin [3], he gave explicit formulas for the asymptotic variances and covariances as well as functional limit theorems for the urn. Then, Janson [10] considered a particular two color Pólya urn model evolving according to a triangular replacement matrix (the matrix in non irreducible) with deterministic entries. He established theorems describing the asymptotic behavior of the composition of the urn after draws. Afterwards, Aguech [1] extended some results and studied two colors urn model with triangular replacement matrix. The entries of such a matrix, and , are positive random variables with finite means and variances. The embedding in continuous times’ method were successful once again and he gave theorems about the asymptotic behavior of the urn’s composition after a long time.
In this paper, we deal with a two color unbalanced urn class with multiple drawing and random addition matrix. Consider and two discrete-valued random variables. We assume that there exists two constants and such that and . Let (resp ) be a sequence of independent random variables distributed like (resp ). The sequences and are not assumed to be independent.
The model we study is defined as follows: An urn contains initially white balls and blue balls, we fix an integer , at a discrete step , we draw uniformly at random a sample of balls, we denote by the number of white balls among those balls (we assume that the initial composition of the urn is more than to make the first draw possible). We return the drawn sample together with balls, where is a 2 × 2 matrix depending on the random variables and . Let us denote by (resp ) the number of white balls (resp blue balls), the total number of balls and by the proportion of white balls in the urn at time . In other words, the process is defined recursively as follows: for all
Let be the -field generated by the first draws. Note that, with these notations, we have for
Thus, conditioning on the variable has an hypergeometric distribution with parameters and . Some particular cases were the interest of recent works [4,15] and [2], where the authors characterized the urn models defined by Eq. (1) for the following cases
where are strictly positive integers. To generalize the previous works, we consider the urn models evolving according to Eq. (1) with
The main idea is to use the stochastic algorithms and martingales in order to prove that the number of white balls in the urn converges almost surely and to study its fluctuations around its limit whenever it is possible.
2. Main results
We start with some notations. The notation stands for almost surely. For a random variable , we denote by
by (respectively ) and (respectively ). For and two sequences of real numbers such that for all , we denote (respectively ) if (if when and are random).
In this section we state our main result. As mentioned in the introduction, we study urn models evolving according to Eq. (1). Recall that in the whole of paper we consider (resp ), a sequence of independent random variables distributed like (resp ).
The present theorem deals with an urn evolving with an anti-diagonal replacement matrix. The model is then opposite reinforced, i.e the more color is drawn the more it reinforces the opposite color.
Let and consider the urn model evolving by the matrix . We have the following results:
(1) The total number of balls in the urn after n draws satisfies
and the number of white and blue balls in the urn afterdraws satisfy(3)(2) Furthermore, with , the normalized number of white balls in the urn satisfies the central limit theorem
(4)(3) Furthermore, when for all , the total number of balls in the urn after draws satisfies, for any
The number of white ballsand blue ballsin the urn afterdraws satisfy for anyWe have the convergence in distribution:where
Let and (where and are not random), then . This case was studied in [2] and the authors proved the following
Under the notation of Theorem 1, we easily compute and then the particular case is proved again.
Let (non random), the urn is balanced and the total number of balls is deterministic and satisfies . Furthermore, we have and , applying Theorem 1 we obtain the following limit:
Kuba et al. [15] studied this particular case and established such a result via two different methods: The recursion formulas permit to derive the expression of the higher moments of the number of white balls and then to conclude functional limit theorem. The same result was proved via martingales method.
In the following theorem, we consider a diagonal replacement matrix . The model is self reinforced since the rich gets richer. As the particular case when , we compare with 1, we will distinguish different phases.
Consider the urn evolving by the matrix
(1) If , then the total number of balls in the urn after draws satisfies
and the asymptotic composition of the urn iswhereandis a positive random variable.(2) If , the composition of the urn after draws satisfies
In addition, there exists a positive random variablesuch that,(3) Furthermore, if for all , , the distribution of the random variable is absolutely continuous.
The case when is obtained by interchanging the colors. In fact we have the following almost sure results:
where is a positive random variable and
Aguech [1] studied the particular case when and considered the following triangular replacement matrix
where and are independent positive random variables with finite means and variances. Via embedding in continuous time method and martingales, the author proved, for , the following almost sure results:
(a) If ,
where and is a positive random variable.(b) If ,
where and are the almost sure limit of a continuous time martingale.
We prove again these results in Theorem 2 using stochastic approximation algorithm.
Chen and Kuba [4] studied the case when ( is non random) and . They gave explicit expressions of moment of all order of and proved that its almost sure limit, cannot be an ordinary distribution, unlike the original Pòlya urn model [7] when and , Eggenberger and Pólya proved in 1923 that the random variable has a Beta distribution with parameters . Unfortunately, in our model we cannot yet derive the expression of higher moments of since the recurrence formulas are too intricate.
3. Some results on stochastic approximation algorithm
The stochastic algorithm approximation plays a crucial role in the proofs in order to describe the asymptotic composition of the urn. As many versions of the stochastic algorithm exist in the literature (see [6] for example), we adapt the version of Renlund in [20,21].
A stochastic approximation algorithm is a stochastic process taking values in and adapted to a filtration that satisfies
where and are two -measurable sequences of random variables, is a function from into such that , and the following conditions hold almost surely: There exists constants and positive real numbers such that for any ,
(i) ;
(ii) ;
(iii) ;
(iv) .
Let . A zero will be called stable if there exists a neighborhood of such that whenever If is differentiable, then is sufficient to determine that is stable.
Note that Assumption in Definition 1 is not stated as in [20] where it is assumed that there exists a positive constant such that .
We have the following result about the process defined by Eq. (5)
Let be a stochastic algorithm defined by Eq. (5). If is continuous, then exists almost surely and is a stable zero of .
The following lemmas will be useful for the proof of Proposition 1.
Define . Under the assumptions of Proposition 1, converges almost surely.
Proof. Under the assumptions mentioned in Definition 1, we have
We deduce that is a martingale. On the other hand,
It follows that is an - bounded martingale, and thus, it converges almost surely. □
Next lemma ensures that, under the assumptions of Proposition 1, all possible candidates for the almost sure limit of are necessary among the zeros of .
Let be the set of zeros of and let be the set of limit points of defined by
wheredenotes the closure of a set. Under the assumptions ofProposition 1, ifis continuous, then,
Suppose that (or ) for some , whenever . Then,
We are now able to handle the proof of Proposition 1.
The proof is close to Theorem 1 in [20], for the convenience of the reader, we resume the proof and we mention the main steps. If does not exist, we can find two rational numbers in the open interval
. Let be two arbitrary different rational numbers. If we can show that
Case 1: and are not in the same connected component of : Since is closed and is continuous there must exist such that is non-zero and has a constant sign for all . By Lemma 3, it is impossible to have and .
Case 2: and are in the same connected component of : In all the cases of our framework is a set of two isolated points, therefore we are not interested to the case when and are not in the same connected component.
To establish that the almost sure limit of is among the stable point set, we refer the reader to [20] to see a detailed proof. □
Next result is due to Renlund [21] which will be used in the proofs of Theorems 1 and 2.
Let satisfy Eq. (5) and that . Let
If converges almost surely to some limit and if then, we have the convergence in distribution
4. Proof of the main results
4.1 Prerequisite for the proofs of the main results
We show in the following that the stochastic approximation algorithm is a fruitful method to study unbalanced urn models. Although there are few versions of such a method that permit to to be random, the version of Renlund [20] and [21] applies to our model.
Under the assumptions of Theorem 1 and according to Eq. (1), the compositions of the urn satisfy the following recursions:
and
We start with first results that will be useful for the proof of Theorem 2.
For all integers such that we have
and
Since conditioning on the variable has an hypergeometric distribution with parameters , and , it follows from Lemma 4 the following:
and
and
with
An easy computation shows that . □
Using Proposition 1, we show that the almost sure limit of the proportion of white balls in the urn depends on the means of the variables and :
The proportion of white balls in the urn after draws, under the assumptions of Theorem 1, satisfies
Proof. In view of Lemma 5, we check the assumptions of Definition 1, indeed,
- (i)
an easy computation shows that
Since for all we have , and , then(9)Then the following bound holds, for allwith and(10) - (ii)
- (iii)
- (iv)
Since the function , defined in Lemma 5, is continuous, we conclude by Proposition 1, that the process converges to
which is the unique zero of with negative derivative. □
The following Lemma will intervene in the proof of Theorem.
Under the assumptions of Theorem 1, the total number of balls after draws satisfies
Proof. Let by the recursive Eq. (7), we have
Since are i.i.d. random variables, then by the strong law of large numbers we have
Via Proposition 2 and Cesáro lemma, we conclude that converges , as goes to infinity, to . Finally, we prove that the last term in the right side tends to zero, as tends to infinity. In fact, is a martingale difference sequence with quadratic variation given by
where . By a simple computation, we have the almost sure convergence
Therefore, Cesáro lemma ensures that
It follows that . Thus, for large enough, we have
The convergence in Proposition 2 holds also in .
Under the hypothesis of Theorem 2, the process of the urn satisfies the following recursions:
Next results will be used in the proof of Theorem 2.
and
with
Proof. We check that, if , the assumptions of Definition 1 hold. Indeed,
- (i)
Eq. (12) shows that
- (ii)
- (iii)
- (iv)
□
Under the assumptions of Theorem 2, the proportion of white balls in the urn after draws, , satisfies
Proof. Recall that, if , satisfies the stochastic algorithm of Lemma 7. As the function is continuous, by Theorem 3 we conclude that converges to the stable zero of the function with a negative derivative, which is if and if
In the case when , we have , where
Since , then is a positive martingale which converges to a positive random variable . □
As a consequence of Proposition 3, we have
Suppose that , the total number of balls in the urn, , satisfies as tends to infinity
The convergence in Corollary 1 holds also in .
We have
For the particular case when for all , we have the following results
Let be a sequence of increasing events such that . If there exists nonnegative Borel measurable function such that for all Borel sets B
then,exists almost everywhere andis the density of.
Define the events
then,is a sequence of increasing events, moreover we have.
Let the distribution of .
For a fixed , there exists a positive constant , such that, for every , , and , we have
Proof. According to Lemma 4.1 in [5], for , and , the following holds:
which is a polynomial in of degree with coefficients depending on and only.
Let . Applying Eq. (15) to our model we have almost surely
4.2 Proof of Theorem 1
Recall that (resp ) is a sequence of random variable distributed like (resp ). We consider the urn model evolving by the anti-diagonal matrix .
These convergence hold also in .
In fact, in view of Lemma 6, we have converges to and
Since converges to , we have,
Using the fact that
and that converges to , we conclude that converges to Applying Theorem 3, we obtain the following
Since we have
Slutsky theorem is enough to conclude the proof.
Theorem 1. In this particular case, the claims (1) and (2) apply and the almost sure limit of the urn’s composition follows immediately as well as a central limit theorem. Furthermore, as such a case is easier, we can obtain a finer rate of convergence of the normalized number of balls in the urn. We also give another version of central limit theorem satisfied by using the weak dependence between the variables and the Bernstein’s method.
Recall that when for all , the urn is evolving according to Eq. (1) with a replacement matrix given by
Theorem 1 applies for and the following almost sure results follows:
On the other hand, the total number of balls in the urn is a sum of i.i.d. random variables . According to the strong law of large number we get a finer rate of convergence of , we have for
Using and Eq. (16), we have
We conclude that the number of white balls in the urn after draws, , satisfies almost surely for large enough
In such a model, the proportion of white balls in the urn, , satisfies the stochastic approximation algorithm defined by Eq. (5) with ,
and
Moreover, we propose the following result about the variance of .
Under the hypothesis of Theorem 1, with for all , the variance of satisfies for every
Proof. Because the number of white balls in the urn satisfies Eq. (6), we write
We have
On the other hand, since the variables are independent then and are independent, thus it follows
where and
Thus,
There exists a constant such that , which leads to
In this particular case, two versions of the central limit theorem for the number of white balls are proved. The first version is deduced by Theorem 1(2) and the second one is proved using the weak dependence between the variables together with Bernstein’s Method.
Applying Theorem 1(2), we have , it follows that , by a simple computation for the coefficients for we have for :
We conclude that, in distribution we have
A second central limit theorem is satisfied by . As the proof is close to that of Lemma 3 and Theorem 4 in [2], we will mention only the main steps and we refer the reader to [2] for the details. The idea of the proof is the following: Once we prove that the variables are -mixing variables with a strong mixing coefficient , (see Lemma 3 in [2] for detailed computations), Bernstein’s method (see [17]) will be suitable. Consider the same notations as in Theorem 4 in [2] with
and is the centered normal random variable with variance
Actually, all that remains in this case, is to compute the variance of . For that, we use Proposition 5. As a conclusion,
4.3 Proof of Theorem 2
Theorem 2 deals with unbalanced urn model with diagonal replacement matrix. We applied Proposition 1 to find the almost sure limit of the proportion of white balls in the urn. The stochastic algorithm applies only to the case when , because when we fall on the case . Furthermore, Theorem 3 does not work, in fact, by a simple computation we obtain . Such a result is expected since that even for the case ( is constant) and , the fluctuations of around its limit has not a normal distribution.
Consider the urn model defined by Eq. (1) with .
Theorem 2. Corollary 1 ensures that, if we have
Indeed,
If , we have, a.s.,
Moreover, let then is a positive martingale. There exists a positive number such that where . Then, as tends to infinity we have
where is a positive random variable.
• If , the sequences and are -martingales such that where , then, as tends to infinity, we have
where and are positive random variables satisfying
Since Theorem 2 applies to that case, we obtain the following strong law of large number
where is a positive random variable. Furthermore, as is a sum of i.i.d. random variables then satisfies for every
To prove that is absolutely continuous, we follow the proof of Theorem 4.2 in [5] and we give the main steps. The idea is the following: given the sequence of increasing event defined in Lemma 8, if we show that the restriction of on every has a density for each , with , then Proposition 4 ensures the existence of the density of almost every where. In fact, for a fixed and , we denote by . We have the following inequality:
This implies that there exists some positive constant , depending on only, such that, for a fixed and for all , we get
Let and , and setting such that By Fatou’s lemma we have
Then the proof follows.
Outlook: We suggest that if we replace the boundedness hypothesis of the variables and by the assumption that and have finite moments of order , our results remain true.
The first author is grateful to the King Saud University, Deanship of Scientific Research, College of Science Research Center. The authors also thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. The publisher wishes to inform readers that the article “Unbalanced multi-drawing urn with random addition matrix” was originally published by the previous publisher of the Arab Journal of Mathematical Sciences and the pagination of this article has been subsequently changed. There has been no change to the content of the article. This change was necessary for the journal to transition from the previous publisher to the new one. The publisher sincerely apologises for any inconvenience caused. To access and cite this article, please use Rafik, A., Olfa, S. (2019), “Unbalanced multi-drawing urn with random addition matrix” Arab Journal of Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 26 No. 1/2, pp. 57-74. The original publication date for this paper was 11/01/2019.
