A combinatorial problem from sooner waiting time problems with run and frequency quotas (Q2496709)

The authors investigate a computational method for solving the combinatorial problem of finding the number of integers satisfying \(z_1 + z_2 +\dots + z_k\leq w\), \(1\leq z_i\leq r\), \(i= 1, 2, \dots, k\), \(1\leq k< f\), for given \(f, r, w\in\mathbb N\), with \(w\geq \max\{f, r\}\). This problem (and another equivalent one) is naturally related to the study of obtaining exact distributions of sooner waiting time random variables of run and frequency quotas in statistics. The authors use an approach based on the probability generating foundation (PGF) method to obtain numerical algorithms to compute the solutions corresponding to the problem. From the symbolic PFG method, the authors derive an efficient algorithm for calculating the exact distributions of the sooner waiting time random variable. The algorithm is applied to a specific waiting time problem and proves its numerical efficiency, suggesting a good behaviour when handling and solving large scale applications.