Related papers: How to lose as little as possible
A reformulation of the Kelly Criterion is presented. Let $\mathfrak{G}$ be a generic stochastic Bernoulli binary game with outcomes $\mathscr{Z}(I)\in\lbrace -1,1\rbrace$ of N trials for $I=1...N$. The binomial probabilities are…
Consider the following abstract coin tossing problem: Given a set of $n$ coins with unknown biases, find the most biased coin using a minimal number of coin tosses. This is a common abstraction of various exploration problems in theoretical…
In the communication problem $\mathbf{UR}$ (universal relation) [KRW95], Alice and Bob respectively receive $x, y \in\{0,1\}^n$ with the promise that $x\neq y$. The last player to receive a message must output an index $i$ such that…
Given a finite set of positive integers, $A$, and starting with a heap of $n$ chips, Alice and Bob alternate turns and on each turn a player chooses $x\in A$ with $x$ smaller or equal than the current number of chips and subtract $x$ chips…
We study a problem related to coin flipping, coding theory, and noise sensitivity. Consider a source of truly random bits $x \in \bits^n$, and $k$ parties, who have noisy versions of the source bits $y^i \in \bits^n$, where for all $i$ and…
In this paper we study interactive "one-shot" analogues of the classical Slepian-Wolf theorem. Alice receives a value of a random variable $X$, Bob receives a value of another random variable $Y$ that is jointly distributed with $X$.…
We present a formalism that captures the process of proving quantum superiority to skeptics as an interactive game between two agents, supervised by a referee. Bob, is sampling from a classical distribution on a quantum device that is…
For many protocols, quantum strategies have advantages compared with their classical counter-partners, and these advantages have attracted many interests and applications. One of the famous examples is the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH)…
In the "correlated sampling" problem, two players are given probability distributions $P$ and $Q$, respectively, over the same finite set, with access to shared randomness. Without any communication, the two players are each required to…
The following problem is considered. Two players are each required to allocate a quota of~$n$ counters among~$k$ boxes labelled~$1,2,\ldots,k$. At times $t=1,2,3,\ldots$ a random box is identified; the probability of choosing box~$i$…
A sequence of spin-1/2 particles polarised in one of two possible directions is presented to an experimenter, who can wager in a double-or-nothing game on the outcomes of measurements in freely chosen polarisation directions. Wealth is…
The takeoff point for this paper is the voluminous body of literature addressing recursive betting games with expected logarithmic growth of wealth being the performance criterion. Whereas almost all existing papers involve use of linear…
A query game is a pair of a set $Q$ of queries and a set $\mathcal{F}$ of functions, or codewords $f:Q\rightarrow \mathbb{Z}.$ We think of this as a two-player game. One player, Codemaker, picks a hidden codeword $f\in \mathcal{F}$. The…
Fix two words over the binary alphabet $\{0,1\}$, and generate iid Bernoulli$(p)$ bits until one of the words occurs in sequence. This setup, commonly known as Penney's ante, was popularized by Conway, who found (in unpublished work) a…
This paper deals with the numerical computation of the least singular value of a rectangular matrix $A$ relative to a pair of closed convex cones $(P,Q)$, which is defined as the optimal value of the non-convex optimization problem of…
We consider extensive form win-lose games over a complete binary-tree of depth $n$ where players act in an alternating manner. We study arguably the simplest random structure of payoffs over such games where 0/1 payoffs in the leafs are…
The Chow-Robbins game is a classical still partly unsolved stopping problem introduced by Chow and Robbins in 1965. You repeatedly toss a fair coin. After each toss, you decide if you take the fraction of heads up to now as a payoff,…
We propose a communication protocol exploiting correlations between two events with a definite time-ordering: a) the outcome of a {\em weak measurement} on a spin, and b) the outcome of a subsequent ordinary measurement on the spin. In our…
The problem we are considering is the following. A colorblind player is given a set $B = \{b_1,b_2,...,b_N\}$ of $N$ colored balls. He knows that each ball is colored either red or green, and that there are less green balls (this will be…
The problem of minimizing the maximum of $N$ convex, Lipschitz functions plays significant roles in optimization and machine learning. It has a series of results, with the most recent one requiring $O(N\epsilon^{-2/3} + \epsilon^{-8/3})$…