Related papers: The Probability Distribution for Draws Until First…
We establish a general formula for the distribution of the score in table tennis. We use this formula to derive the probability distribution (and hence the expectation and variance) of the number of rallies necessary to achieve any given…
Can a probabilistic gambler get arbitrarily rich when all deterministic gamblers fail? We study this problem in the context of algorithmic randomness, introducing a new notion -- almost everywhere computable randomness. A binary sequence…
We consider a two-round election model involving $m$ voters and $n$ candidates. Each voter is endowed with a strict preference list ranking the candidates. In the first round, the candidates are partitioned into two subsets, $A$ and $B$,…
In this paper we consider two variants of the Secretary problem: The Best-or-Worst and the Postdoc problems. We extend previous work by considering that the number of objects is not known and follows either a discrete Uniform distribution…
A universal programmable discriminator can perform the discrimination between two unknown states, and the optimal solution can be approached via the discrimination between the two averages over the uniformly distributed unknown input pure…
Elections involving a very large voter population often lead to outcomes that surprise many. This is particularly important for the elections in which results affect the economy of a sizable population. A better prediction of the true…
Opportunities, such as access to education or family background, shape income inequality by influencing the chances of economic success. Unequal opportunities create uncertainty about whether success is merit- or luck-based. We examine how…
This paper examines the classical matching distribution arising in the "problem of coincidences". We generalise the classical matching distribution with a preliminary round of allocation where items are correctly matched with some fixed…
When a beneficial mutation occurs in a population, the new, favored allele may spread to the entire population. This process is known as a selective sweep. Suppose we sample $n$ individuals at the end of a selective sweep. If we focus on a…
Consider the following game between a random player R and a deterministic player D. There is a pile of n elements at the beginning. The rules for playing are as follows: In each turn of R, if the pile contains exactly m elements, R removes…
In two recent articles we have examined a generalization of the binomial distribution associated with a sequence of positive numbers, involving asymmetric expressions of probabilities that break the symmetry {\it win-loss}. We present in…
Consider a rooted Galton-Watson tree $T$, to each of whose edges we assign, independently, a weight that equals $+1$ with probability $p_{1}$, $0$ with probability $p_{0}$ and $-1$ with probability $p_{-1}=1-p_{1}-p_{0}$. We play a game on…
This paper considers the problem of inference after ranking. In our setting, we are interested in any population whose rank according to some random quantity, such as an estimated treatment effect, a measure of value-added, or benefit (net…
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…
Consider an n by n array of cards shuffled in the following manner. An element x of the array is chosen uniformly at random; Then with probability 1/2 the rectangle of cards above and to the left of x is rotated 180 degrees, and with…
We investigate the problem of random assignment of indivisible goods, in which each agent has an ordinal preference and a constraint. Our goal is to characterize the conditions under which there always exists a random assignment that…
We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. An ordered deck of $n$ cards labeled $1$ up to $n$ is shelf-shuffled exactly one time. One after the other a single card is drawn from the shuffled deck. The guesser makes has guess…
Consider a number, finite or not, of urns each with fixed capacity $r$ and balls randomly distributed among them. An overflow is the number of balls that are assigned to urns that already contain $r$ balls. When $r=1$, using analytic…
The multiplication game is a two-person game in which each player chooses a positive integer without knowledge of the other player's number. The two numbers are then multiplied together and the first digit of the product determines the…
In the best choice problem with random arrivals, an unknown number $n$ of rankable items arrive at times sampled from the uniform distribution. As is well known, a real-time player can ensure stopping at the overall best item with…