Various enumerations of labeled trees and forests, including Cayley's formula n n\Gamma2 for the number of trees labeled by [n], and Cayley's multinomial expansion over trees, are derived from the following coalescent construction of a sequence of random forests (R n ; R n\Gamma1 ; : : : ; R 1 ) such that R k has uniform distribution over the set of all forests of k rooted trees labeled by [n]. Let R n be the trivial forest with n root vertices and no edges. For n k 2, given that R n ; : : : ; R k have been defined so that R k is a rooted forest of k trees, define R k\Gamma1 by addition to R k of a single edge picked uniformly at random from the set of n(k \Gamma 1) edges which when added to R k yield a rooted forest of k \Gamma 1 trees. This coalescent construction is related to a model for a physical process of clustering or coagulation, the additive coalescent in which a system of masses is subject to binary coalescent collisions, with each pair of masses of magnitude...

Given an arbitrary distribution on a countable set S consider the number of independent samples required until the first repeated value is seen. Exact and asymptotic formulae are derived for the distribution of this time and of the times until subsequent repeats. Asymptotic properties of the repeat times are derived by embedding in a Poisson process. In particular, necessary and sufficient conditions for convergence are given and the possible limits explicitly described. Under the same conditions the finite dimensional distributions of the repeat times converge to the arrival times of suitably modified Poisson processes, and random trees derived from the sequence of independent Research supported in part by N.S.F. Grants DMS 92-24857, 94-04345, 92-24868 and 97-03691 trials converge in distribution to an inhomogeneous continuum random tree. 1 Introduction Recall the classical birthday problem: given that each day of the year is equally likely as a possible birthday, and that birth...

Extensions of binomial and multinomial formulae due to Abel, Cayley and Hurwitz are related to the probability distributions of various random subsets, trees, forests, and mappings. For instance, an extension of Hurwitz's binomial formula is associated with the probability distribution of the random set of vertices of a fringe subtree in a random forest whose distribution is defined by terms of a multinomial expansion over rooted labeled forests which generalizes Cayley's expansion over unrooted labeled trees. Contents 1 Introduction 2 Research supported in part by N.S.F. Grant DMS97-03961 2 Probabilistic Interpretations 5 3 Cayley's multinomial expansion 11 4 Random Mappings 14 4.1 Mappings from S to S : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 15 4.2 The random set of cyclic points : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 18 5 Random Forests 19 5.1 Distribution of the roots of a p-forest : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 19 5.2 Conditioning on the set...

Various random combinatorial objects, such as mappings, trees, forests, and subsets of a finite set, are constructed with probability distributions related to the binomial and multinomial expansions due to Abel, Cayley and Hurwitz. Relations between these combinatorial objects, such as Joyal's bijection between mappings and marked rooted trees, have interesting probabilistic interpretations, and applications to the asymptotic structure of large random trees and mappings. An extension of Hurwitz's binomial formula is associated with the probability distribution of the random set of vertices of a fringe subtree in a random forest whose distribution is defined by terms of a multinomial expansion over rooted labeled forests. Research supported in part by N.S.F. Grants DMS 97-03961 and DMS-0071448 1 Contents 1

We introduce a family of probability distributions on the space of trees with I labeled vertices and possibly extra unlabeled vertices of degree 3, whose edges have positive real lengths. Formulas for distributions of quantities such asdegree sequence, shape, and total length are derived. An interpretation is given in terms of sampling from the inhomogeneous continuum random tree of Aldous and Pitman (1998). Key words and phrases. Continuum tree, enumeration, random tree, spanning tree, weighted tree, Cayley's multinomial expansion.

Hurwitz's extension of Abel's binomial theorem defines a probability distribution on the set of integers from 0 to n. This is the distribution of the number of non-root vertices of a fringe subtree of a suitably defined random tree with n + 2 vertices. The asymptotic behaviour of this distribution is described in a limiting regime where the distribution of the delabeled fringe subtree approaches that of a Galton-Watson tree with a mixed Poisson offspring distribution. 1 Introduction and statement of results Hurwitz [10] discovered the following identity of polynomials in n + 2 variables x; y and z s ; s 2 [n] := f1; : : : ; ng, which reduces to the binomial expansion of (x + y) n when Research supported in part by N.S.F. Grant DMS97-03961 z s j 0: X A`[n] x(x + z A ) jAj\Gamma1 (y + z ¯ A ) j ¯ Aj = (x + y + z [n] ) n (1) where the sum is over all 2 n subsets A of [n], with the notations z A := P s2A z s , and jAj for the number of elements of A, and ¯ A := [n] \...

This paper presents a systematic approach to the discovery, interpretation and verification of various extensions of Hurwitz's multinomial identities, involving polynomials defined by sums over all subsets of a finite set. The identities are interpreted as decompositions of forest volumes defined by the enumerator polynomials of sets of rooted labeled forests. These decompositions involve the following basic forest volume formula, which is a refinement of Cayley's multinomial expansion: for R ` S the polynomial enumerating out-degrees of vertices of rooted forests labeled by S whose set of roots is R, with edges directed away from the roots, is ( P r2R x r )( P s2S x s ) jS j\GammajRj\Gamma1