Notes on the occupancy problem with infinitely many boxes: general asymptotics and power laws ∗

Abstract

This paper collects facts about the number of occupied boxes in the classical balls-in-boxes occupancy scheme with infinitely many positive frequencies: equivalently, about the number of species represented in sam- ples from populations with infinitely many species. We present moments of this random variable, discuss asymptotic relations among them and with re- lated random variables, and draw connections with regular variation, which appears in various manifestations. AMS 2000 subject classifications: Primary 60F05, 60F15; secondary