Related papers: Variations on the Two Envelopes Problem
We give an interpretation of the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) Principle in game-theoretic terms. Based on this interpretation, we make a formal distinction between different ways of {em applying/} Maximum Entropy distributions. MaxEnt has…
We consider how an agent should update her uncertainty when it is represented by a set P of probability distributions and the agent observes that a random variable X takes on value x, given that the agent makes decisions using the minimax…
In this note we present a brief overview of variational methods to solve homogenization problems. The purpose is to give a first insight on the subject by presenting some fundamental theoretical tools, both classical and modern. We conclude…
In this note, we investigate combinatorial games where both players move randomly (each turn, independently selecting a legal move uniformly at random). In this model, we provide closed-form expressions for the expected number of turns in a…
We consider a quantum version of a well-known statistical decision problem, whose solution is, at first sight, counter-intuitive to many. In the quantum version a continuum of possible choices (rather than a finite set) has to be…
We comment on, elaborate, and extend the work of Warren Ewens and Herbert Wilf, described in their http://www.pnas.org/content/104/27/11189.full.pdf about the maximum in balls-and-boxes problem. In particular we meta-apply their ingenious…
We consider systems of "pinned balls," i.e., balls that have fixed positions and pseudo-velocities. Pseudo-velocities change according to the same rules as those for velocities of totally elastic collisions between moving balls. The times…
We present a new approach to compute selected eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the two-parameter eigenvalue problem. Our method requires computing generalized eigenvalue problems of the same size as the matrices of the initial two-parameter…
We present an analysis of a coin-tossing problem posed by Daniel Litt which has generated some popular interest. We demonstrate a recursive identity which leads to relatively simple formulas for the excess number of wins for one player over…
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…
We consider two-player games played on weighted directed graphs with mean-payoff and total-payoff objectives, two classical quantitative objectives. While for single-dimensional games the complexity and memory bounds for both objectives…
We show that any cooperative game can be represented by an assignment of costly facilities to players, in which it is intuitively obvious how to allocate the total cost in an equitable manner. This equitable solution turns out to be the…
When writing a constraint program, we have to choose which variables should be the decision variables, and how to represent the constraints on these variables. In many cases, there is considerable choice for the decision variables.…
The Value Problem for weighted timed games (WTGs) consists in determining, given a two-player weighted timed game with a reachability objective and a rational threshold, whether or not the value of the game exceeds the threshold. This…
We consider systems of "pinned balls," i.e., balls that have fixed positions and pseudo-velocities. Pseudo-velocities change according to the same rules as those for velocities of totally elastic collisions between moving balls. The times…
Consider QBF, the Quantified Boolean Formula problem, as a combinatorial game ruleset. The problem is rephrased as determining the winner of the game where two opposing players take turns assigning values to boolean variables. In this…
Determining how close a winner of an election is to becoming a loser, or distinguishing between different possible winners of an election, are major problems in computational social choice. We tackle these problems for so-called weighted…
In the last few decades, numerous experiments have shown that humans do not always behave so as to maximize their material payoff. Cooperative behavior when non-cooperation is a dominant strategy (with respect to the material payoffs) is…
In this paper the results of a simulation of a prisoner's dilemma robin-round tournament are presented. In the tournament each participating strategy plays an iterated prisoner's dilemma against each other strategy (round-robin) and as a…
The problem of identifying the best arm among a collection of items having Gaussian rewards distribution is well understood when the variances are known. Despite its practical relevance for many applications, few works studied it for…