Functionals of random mappings: exact and asymptotic results

Abstract

A random mapping partitions the set {1, 2, ···, m} into components, where i and j are in the same component if some functional iterate of i equals some functional iterate of j. We consider various functionals of these partitions and of samples from it, including the number of components of ‘small' size and of size O(m) as m → ∞the size of the largest component, the number of components, and various symmetric functionals of the normalized component sizes. In many cases exact results, while available, are uniformative, and we consider various approximations. Numerical and simulation results are also presented. A central tool for many calculations is the ‘frequency spectrum', both exact and asymptotic.