Searching for Losers

We investigate the following process: N people select b losers by flipping coins. The 0‐party continues until there are less than b losers; then the 1‐party has to find the other losers by the same process. The average time for this process is about long2 N, but this result requires rather advanced methods. Furthermore, the average size of a binary tree associated to this process and the average number of coin flippings are computed. The method used in this article can be used to give asympotical solutions of a special type of bivariate recurrences. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. © 1993 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.