| Abstract: | Uniform random mappings of an n-element set to itself have been much studied in the combinatorial literature. We introduce a new technique, which starts by specifying a coding of mappings as walks with ± 1 steps. The uniform random mapping is thereby coded as a nonuniform random walk, and our main result is that as n→∞ the random walk rescales to reflecting Brownian bridge. This result encompasses a large number of limit theorems for “global” characteristics of uniform random mappings. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. |
