There are totally n bins. Out of k selections, how many times bin i,
i<=k is selected? Equavalently, how many time any of these bins is selected?

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Clarification of Question by harc-ga on 09 Mar 2006 12:31 PST

This is not a homework problem.
I am studying a manufacturing system where operator performs tasks.
Every task is located on a table. Tasks appear uniformily on tables.
After completing a particular task an operator drops completed task
into a bin that is next to the table. However, if a bin is full, an
operator has to walk to the next closest bin (closest table that has
an empty bin). I need to know how many times an operator faces a
situation when he/she needs to walk to another table so that I can
estimate total walking time. Assume there are n tables/bins and an
operator needs to complete k tsaks that are uniformily appear on
tables. It is possible that on the same table 2 or more tasks appear
at any instance.

Questions which appear to be homework (whether or not they really are)
don't get responses from researchers because we won't get paid for our
work.

Perhaps one of the non-researchers will help you out if you can't
rephrase this so it doesn't look so much like homework.

You wording confuses me a little bit, but from you original question
if there are n bins and k independent pickings of bins then each bin
has an expected value of being picked k/n times, similar to a dice, if
I roll one 6 times it is expected that I will land each of the 6
numbers once.  If you can better explain your question you might be
able to get more help, on the other hand I'm not in the best state of
mind so I might just be missing it.