Balls in Boxes: Variations on a Theme of Warren Ewens and Herbert Wilf

Abstract

We comment on, elaborate, and extend the work of Warren Ewens and Herbert Wilf, described in their http://www.pnas.org/content/104/27/11189.full.pdf about the maximum in balls-and-boxes problem. In particular we meta-apply their ingenious method to show that it is not really needed, and that one is better off using the so-called Poisson Approximation, at least in applications to the real world, because extremely unlikely events mever happen in real life. This article is accompanied by the Maple package http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/tokhniot/BallsInBoxes">BallsInBoxes.

13 pages; Dedicated to Herbert Saul Wilf on his 80th birthday