Related papers: Dreidel Fairness Study
The aim of this paper is to solve the "gift exchange" problem: you are one of n players, and there are n wrapped gifts on display; when your turn comes, you can either choose any of the remaining wrapped gifts, or you can "steal" a gift…
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…
Consider a 4-player version of Matching Pennies where a team of three players competes against the Devil. Each player simultaneously says "Heads" or "Tails". The team wins if all four choices match; otherwise the Devil wins. If all team…
We determine the behavior of Tanton's candy-passing game for all distributions of at least 3n-2 candies, where n is the number of students. Specifically, we show that the configuration of candy in such a game eventually becomes fixed.
We analyze what happens to the average duration of a game of Chutes and Ladders as the probability of rolling $\delta \in \{ 1,2,3,4,5,6\}$ approaches 100%. We utilize Markov models, and Monte Carlo simulations in Python. We also introduce…
In a well-shuffled deck of cards, what is the probability that somewhere in the deck there are adjacent cards of the same rank? What is the average number of adjacent matches? What is the probability distribution for the number of matches?…
Both Cuckler and Yuster independently conjectured that when $n$ is an odd positive multiple of $3$ every regular tournament on $n$ vertices contains a collection of $n/3$ vertex-disjoint copies of the cyclic triangle. Soon after, Keevash…
There is a heterogeneous resource that contains both good parts and bad parts, for example, a cake with some parts burnt, a land-estate with some parts heavily taxed, or a chore with some parts fun to do. The resource has to be divided…
A trade-off between accuracy and fairness is almost taken as a given in the existing literature on fairness in machine learning. Yet, it is not preordained that accuracy should decrease with increased fairness. Novel to this work, we…
Chess and chance are seemingly strange bedfellows. Luck and/or randomness have no apparent role in move selection when the game is played at the highest levels. However, when competition is at the ultimate level, that of the World Chess…
When shuffling a deck of cards, one probably wants to make sure it is thoroughly shuffled. A way to do this is by sifting through the cards to ensure that no adjacent cards are the same number, because surely this is a poorly shuffled deck.…
We study the problem of fairly dividing a heterogeneous resource, commonly known as cake cutting and chore division, in the presence of strategic agents. While a number of results in this setting have been established in previous works,…
Graceful tree conjecture is a well-known open problem in graph theory. Here we present a computational approach to this conjecture. An algorithm for finding graceful labelling for trees is proposed. With this algorithm, we show that every…
We describe some three-dozen curious phenomena manifested by parabolas inscribed or circumscribed about certain Poncelet triangle families. Despite their pirouetting motion, parabolas' focus, vertex, directrix, etc., will often sweep or…
We look at the Florida Lottery records of winners of prizes worth $600 or more. Some individuals claimed large numbers of prizes. Were they lucky, or up to something? We distinguish the "plausibly lucky" from the "implausibly lucky" by…
In this paper, we study the problem of splitting fairly bundles of items. We show that given $n$ bundles with $m$ kinds of items in them, it is possible to distribute the value of each kind of item fairly among $r$ persons by breaking apart…
Ranking alternatives is a natural way for humans to explain their preferences. It is being used in many settings, such as school choice, course allocations and residency matches. In some cases, several `items' are given to each participant.…
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…
We identify a new type of paradoxical behavior in dice, where the sum of independent rolls produces a deceptive sequence of dominance relations. We call these ``anti-inductive dice". Consider a game with two players and two non-identical…
We study the effects of randomness on competitions based on an elementary random process in which there is a finite probability that a weaker team upsets a stronger team. We apply this model to sports leagues and sports tournaments, and…