Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2013
We study the distribution of the size of Selmer groups arising from a 2-isogeny and its dual 2-isogeny for quadratic twists of elliptic curves with a non-trivial $2$-torsion point over $\mathbb {Q}$. This complements the work [Xiong and Zaharescu, Distribution of Selmer groups of quadratic twists of a family of elliptic curves. Adv. Math.219 (2008), 523–553] which studied the same subject for elliptic curves with full 2-torsions over $\mathbb {Q}$ and generalizes [Feng and Xiong, On Selmer groups and Tate–Shafarevich groups for elliptic curves $y^2=x^3-n^3$. Mathematika 58 (2012), 236–274.] for the special elliptic curves $y^2=x^3-n^3$. It is shown that the 2-ranks of these groups all follow the same distribution and in particular, the mean value is $\sqrt {\frac {1}{2}\log \log X}$ for square-free positive integers $n \le X$ as $X \to \infty $.