Suppose that each item on a list of $n$ items has a value attached to it, and let $ν(i)$ denote the value attached to the $i$ th item on the list. Suppose that $n$ is very large, and also that each item may appear at many different places on the list.
Can we use random numbers to estimate the sum of the values of the different items on the list (where the value of each item is to be counted once no matter how many times the item appears on the list) ?
I am aware of the procedure if we remove the restriction that each value is summed up only once .