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On the number of terminal vertices in certain random trees with an application to stemma construction in philology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

D. Najock*
Affiliation:
Freie Universität, Berlin
C. C. Heyde*
Affiliation:
CSIRO Division of Mathematics and Statistics, Canberra
*
Postal address: Seminar für Klassische Philologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Ehrenbergstrasse 35, FB 14, WE 1, 1000 Berlin 33, Germany.
∗∗Postal address: CSIRO Division of Mathematics and Statistics, P.O. Box 1965, Canberra City, ACT 2601, Australia.

Abstract

A fundamental task of philologists is to construct the family tree (stemma) of preserved copies of ancient manuscripts. A simple probabilistic model based on random rooted trees is proposed to assist in the identification of the number of terminal copies. The model provides the distribution of the number of terminal vertices in a random tree. An application to stemma construction is given.

Type
Short Communications
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 1982 

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