English

When only the last one will do

Computer Science and Game Theory 2011-04-18 v1 Probability

Abstract

An unknown positive number of items arrive at independent uniformly distributed times in the interval [0,1] to a selector, whose task is to pick online the last one. We show that under the assumption of an adversary determining the number of items, there exists a game-theoretical equilibrium, in other words the selector and the adversary both possess optimal strategies. The probability of success of the selector with the optimal strategy is estimated numerically to 0.352917000207196.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1104.3049,
  title  = {When only the last one will do},
  author = {Johan Wästlund},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1104.3049},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

24 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:54:39.235Z