Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2008
We investigate the behaviour of random homeomorphisms of the circle induced by composing a random homeomorphism of the interval with a randomly chosen rotation. These maps and their iterates are a.s. singular and for each rational number r in [0,1) it is shown that there is a positive probability of obtaining a map with rotation number r. For a ‘canonical’ method of producing these maps, bounds on the probability of obtaining a fixed point are obtained. We estimate this probability via computer simulations in three different ways. Simulations are also carried out for two periods. It remains unknown for this method whether a rational rotation number is obtained a.s.