Related papers: How to lose as little as possible
There are $n$ independent Bernoulli random variables with parameters $p_i$ that are observed sequentially. Two players, A and B, act in turns starting with player A. Each player has the possibility on his turn, when $I_k=1$, to choose…
We consider a simple streaming game between two players Alice and Bob, which we call the mirror game. In this game, Alice and Bob take turns saying numbers belonging to the set $\{1, 2, \dots,2N\}$. A player loses if they repeat a number…
In 1956 John Kelly wrote a paper at Bell Labs describing the relationship between gambling and Information Theory. What came to be known as the Kelly Criterion is both an objective and a closed-form solution to sizing wagers when odds and…
We present a computer assisted proof for a result concerning a three player betting game, introduced by Angel and Holmes. The three players start with initial capital $x, y, z > 0$ respectively. At each step of this game two players are…
We study a game puzzle that has enjoyed recent popularity among mathematicians, computer scientist, coding theorists and even the mass press. In the game, $n$ players are fitted with randomly assigned colored hats. Individual players can…
Let $P = \{p(i)\}$ be a measure of strictly positive probabilities on the set of nonnegative integers. Although the countable number of inputs prevents usage of the Huffman algorithm, there are nontrivial $P$ for which known methods find a…
The graph grabbing game is played on a non-negatively weighted connected graph by Alice and Bob who alternately claim a non-cut vertex from the remaining graph, where Alice plays first, to maximize the weights on their respective claimed…
For a positive integer $n$, an $n$-tuple of dice $(A_1,A_2,\dots,A_n)$ is called balanced if $P(A_1<A_2) = P(A_2<A_3) = \cdots = P(A_n<A_1)$ and nontransitive if $P(A_1<A_2), P(A_2<A_3), \dots, P(A_n<A_1)$ are each greater than…
Alice seeks an information-theoretically secure source of private random data. Unfortunately, she lacks a personal source and must use remote sources controlled by other parties. Alice wants to simulate a coin flip of specified bias…
In the communication problem $\mathbf{UR}$ (universal relation) [KRW95], Alice and Bob respectively receive $x$ and $y$ in $\{0,1\}^n$ with the promise that $x\neq y$. The last player to receive a message must output an index $i$ such that…
We consider the problem of maximizing the Nash social welfare when allocating a set $\mathcal{G}$ of indivisible goods to a set $\mathcal{N}$ of agents. We study instances, in which all agents have 2-value additive valuations: The value of…
Oblivious transfer is a fundamental primitive in cryptography. While perfect information theoretic security is impossible, quantum oblivious transfer protocols can limit the dishonest players' cheating. Finding the optimal security…
We study the dynamics of repeated fair division between two players, Alice and Bob, where Alice partitions a cake into two subsets and Bob chooses his preferred one over $T$ rounds. Alice aims to minimize her regret relative to the…
The toss of a coin is usually regarded as the epitome of randomness, and has been used for ages as a means to resolve disputes in a simple, fair way. Perhaps as ancient as consulting objects such as coins and dice is the art of maliciously…
In $1977$, G. Bennett proved, by means of non-deterministic methods, an inequality which plays a fundamental role in a series of optimization problems. More precisely, Bennett's inequality shows that, for $p_{1},p_{2} \in\lbrack1,\infty]$…
We revisit the game in which each of several players chooses a pattern and then a coin is flipped repeatedly until one of these patterns is generated. In particular, we demonstrate how to compute the probability of any one player winning…
We consider the Last-Success-Problem with $n$ independent Bernoulli random variables with parameters $p_i>0$. We improve the lower bound provided by F.T. Bruss for the probability of winning and provide an alternative proof to the one given…
In Pacific J. Math. 292 (2018), 223-238, Shareshian and Woodroofe asked if for every positive integer $n$ there exist primes $p$ and $q$ such that, for all integers $k$ with $1 \leq k \leq n-1$, the binomial coefficient $\binom{n}{k}$ is…
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…
A two-player one-round binary game consists of two cooperative players who each replies by one bit to a message that he receives privately; they win the game if both questions and answers satisfy some predetermined property. A game is…