The articles in this volume present the state of the art in a variety of areas of discrete probability, including random walks on finite and infinite graphs, random trees, renewal sequences, Stein's method for normal approximation and Kohonen-type self-organizing maps. This volume also focuses on discrete probability and its connections with the theory of algorithms. Classical topics in discrete mathematics are represented as are expositions that condense and make readable some recent work on Markov chains, potential theory and the second moment method. This volume is suitable for...

If you place a large number of points randomly in the unit square, what is the distribution of the radius of the largest circle containing no points? Of the smallest circle containing 4 points? Why do Brownian sample paths have local maxima but not points of increase, and how nearly do they have points of increase? Given two long strings of letters drawn i. i. d. from a finite alphabet, how long is the longest consecutive (resp. non-consecutive) substring appearing in both strings? If an imaginary particle performs a simple random walk on the vertices of a high-dimensional cube, how long does...