Related papers: A Coin-Tossing Conundrum
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…
In this paper we consider a scenario where there are several algorithms for solving a given problem. Each algorithm is associated with a probability of success and a cost, and there is also a penalty for failing to solve the problem. The…
How many fair coin tosses to choose 1 of $n$ options with uniform probability? Although a probability problem, the solution is essentially number-theoretic, with special roles for Mersenne numbers, Fermat numbers, and the haupt exponent. We…
In a recent paper [1], it has been claimed that the outcomes of a quantum coin toss which is idealized as an infinite binary sequence is 1-random. We also defend the correctness of this claim and assert that the outcomes of quantum…
In coin tossing two remote participants want to share a uniformly distributed random bit. At the least in the quantum version, each participant test whether or not the other has attempted to create a bias on this bit. It is requested that,…
By repeated trials, one can determine the fairness of a classical coin with a confidence which grows with the number of trials. A quantum coin can be in a superposition of heads and tails and its state is most generally a density matrix.…
The procedure of tossing quantum coins and dice is described. This case is an important example of a quantum procedure because it presents a typical framework employed in quantum information processing and quantum computing. The emphasis is…
We consider a game in which two separate laboratories collaborate to prepare a quantum system and are then asked to guess the outcome of a measurement performed by a third party in a random basis on that system. Intuitively, by the…
The process of doing Science in condition of uncertainty is illustrated with a toy experiment in which the inferential and the forecasting aspects are both present. The fundamental aspects of probabilistic reasoning, also relevant in real…
Protocols for tossing a common coin play a key role in the vast majority of implementations of consensus. Even though the common coins in the literature are usually \emph{fair} (they have equal chance of landing heads or tails), we focus on…
Is flipping a coin a deterministic process or a random one? We do not allow bounces. If we know the initial velocity and the spin given to the coin, mechanics should predict the face it lands on. However, the coin toss has been everyone's…
Faced with a sequence of N binary events, such as coin flips (or Ising spins), it is natural to ask whether these events reflect some underlying dynamic signals or are just random. Plausible models for the dynamics of hidden biases lead to…
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…
In this article, we look at a hat-guessing game, in which each player must guess the color of their own hat while only seeing the hats of the other players. We focus on the case of two hat colors and a countably infinite number of players.…
The expected utility hypothesis is a popular concept in economics that is useful for making decisions when the payoff is uncertain. In this paper, we investigate the implications of a fluctuation theorem in the theory of expected utility.…
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…
Coin-flipping is a fundamental cryptographic task where a spatially separated Alice and Bob wish to generate a fair coin-flip over a communication channel. It is known that ideal coin-flipping is impossible in both classical and quantum…
This paper questions the generally accepted assumption that one can make a random choice that is independent of the rest of the universe. We give a general description of any setup that could be conceived to generate random numbers. Based…
The ``impossibility theorem'' -- which is considered foundational in algorithmic fairness literature -- asserts that there must be trade-offs between common notions of fairness and performance when fitting statistical models, except in two…
We shall show in this paper that there are experiments which are Bernoulli trials with success probability p > 0.5, and which have the curious feature that it is possible to correctly predict the outcome with probability > p.