On the variance of the number of occupied boxes (Q1031734)

This paper is devoted to the occupancy problem where balls are thrown independently at infinitely many boxes with fixed positive frequencies. It is known that the random number of boxes occupied by the first \(n\) balls is asymptotically normal if its variance \(V_n\) tends to infinity. In this work the authors mainly focus on the opposite case where \(V_n\) is bounded and derive a simple necessary and sufficient condition for convergence of \(V_n\) to a finite limit. Some new conditions for other types of behaviour of the variance, like boundness or convergence to infinity are also obtained.