Consider n cells into which balls are thrown at random until all but m cells contain at least l + 1 balls each. Asymptotic results when n →∞, m and l held fixed, are given for the number of cells containing exactly k balls and for related random variables.

Consider n cells into which balls are thrown at random until k cells contain at least l + 1 balls each. Let Yl, · ··, Yn be the number of balls in the cells when stopping. In this paper two representations are given for the characteristic functions of random variables of the form The usefulness of these representations are illustrated by two examples. In the first the number of cells with exactly one ball when each cell contains at least one ball is considered. In the second the waiting time until the ball-throwing process stops is discussed.

The coupon-collector's and sampling tagging problems are considered, under the model that each tagged element is γ > 0 times as likely to be caught at the next stage as every untagged element. Let WN(γ, k) and SN(γ, j) denote, respectively, the waiting time until k + 1 distinct elements are obtained, and the number of distinct elements in a sample of size j, when the population size is N. Complete characterisations are obtained for the limiting distributions of WN (γ, k) and SN(γ, j), in terms of the rates at which k and j tend to infinity with N.