The necklace process: A generating function approach

Abstract

The “necklace process”, a procedure constructing necklaces of black and white beads by randomly choosing positions to insert new beads (whose color is uniquely determined based on the chosen location), is revisited. This article illustrates how, after deriving the corresponding bivariate probability generating function, the characterization of the asymptotic limiting distribution of the number of beads of a given color follows as a straightforward consequence within the analytic combinatorics framework.