Statistical simulation and the distribution of distances between identical elements in a random sequence
We study the distributions of distances between identical elements of a random sequence (e.g.a sequence of coin tosses or die tosses). We provide methods to generate observations by means of a statistical simulation and show in particular that distributions of multiple distances obey a linear or geometric (mixture) probability model, respectively. The results are useful to discover certain structures in texts or other information strings.
statistical simulation distribution of distances in sequences mcmc zipfs law power laws quantitative linguistics burstiness