Related papers: Why do we change whatever amount we found in the f…
Consider the following game: You are given two indistinguishable envelopes, each containing money. One contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep the money it contains. Having chosen an envelope, you are given…
There are many papers written on the Two Envelopes Problem that usually study some of its variations. In this paper we will study and compare the most significant variations of the problem. We will see the correct decisions for each player…
The two envelopes paradox is discussed. By calculating the conditional probability, we arrive at a conditional expectations which differs from existing results.
The primary objective of this note is to revisit the two envelope problem and propose a simple resolution. It is argued that the paradox arises from the ambiguity associated with the money content $x of the chosen envelope. When X=x is…
The host of a game presents two indistinguishable envelopes to an agent. One of the envelopes is randomly selected and allocated to the agent. The agent is informed that the monetary content of one of the envelopes is twice that of the…
This paper introduces a strategy in the two envelopes problem that utilizes the prior beliefs of two players about the amount of money that their envelopes can contain. This strategy gives them more information about the decision of…
The "paradox" arises in the Two Envelopes Paradox from the incorrect formulation of the argument. The infomation given is misused and therefore the results are incorrect for the question asked. The key is to be clear on what question we are…
The purpose of this note is to raise two different questions, which are rarely if ever considered, and to which, it seems, we lack convincing, systematic answers. These questions can be posed as: - Why do we compute? - What do we compute?…
This article is a gentle introduction to the mathematical area known as circle packing, the study of the kinds of patterns that can be formed by configurations of non-overlapping circles. The first half of the article is an exposition of…
We count the number and patterns of pairs and tuples of independent events in a simple random experiment: first a fair coin is flipped and then a fair die is tossed. The first number, equal to 888,888, suggest that there are some open…
The paper discusses the question of why intervals, which are the main object of Interval Analysis, have exactly the form that we know well and habitually use, and not some other. In particular, we investigate why traditional intervals are…
Fairly allocating indivisible goods is a frequently occurring task in everyday life. Given an initial allocation of the goods, we consider the problem of reforming it via a sequence of exchanges to attain fairness in the form of…
Many problems can be solved in two ways: either by adapting an existing solution, or by exchanging it for a new one. To investigate under what conditions people consider new solutions, we traced their information acquisition processes in a…
We study the classic house-swapping problem of Shapley and Scarf (1974) in a setting where agents may have "objective" indifferences, i.e., indifferences that are shared by all agents. In other words, if any one agent is indifferent between…
One purpose -- quite a few thinkers would say the main purpose -- of seeking knowledge about the world is to enhance our ability to make good decisions. An item of knowledge that can make no conceivable difference with regard to anything we…
Randomness (in the sense of being generated in an IID fashion) and exchangeability are standard assumptions in nonparametric statistics and machine learning, and relations between them have been a popular topic of research. This short paper…
We point out that double distributions need not vanish at their boundary. Boundary terms do not change the ambiguity inherent in defining double distributions; instead, boundary conditions must be satisfied in order to switch between…
Consider a coin tossing experiment which consists of tossing one of two coins at a time, according to a renewal process. The first coin is fair and the second has probability $1/2 + \theta$, $\theta \in [-1/2,1/2]$, $\theta$ unknown but…
We revisit the classical result in finite population sampling which states that in equally-likely "simple" random sampling the sample mean is more reliable when we do not replace after each draw. In this paper we investigate if and when the…
This paper studies lying in a novel context. Previous work has focused on situations in which people are either fully aware of the economic consequences of all available actions (e.g., die-under-cup paradigm), or they are uncertain, but…