Monte-Carlo algorithms for enumeration and reliability problems

1. Introduction We present a simple but very general Monte-Carlo technique for the approximate solution of enumeration and reliability problems. Several applications are given, including: 1. Estimating the number of triangulated plane maps with a given number of ver-tices; 2. Estimating the cardinality of a union of sets; 3. Estimating the number of input combinations for which a boolean function, presented in disjunctive normal form,