Related papers: How does a coin toss? A look under an asymptotic m…
Classical randomized algorithms use a coin toss instruction to explore different evolutionary branches of a problem. Quantum algorithms, on the other hand, can explore multiple evolutionary branches by mere superposition of states. Discrete…
While Bernoulli's equation is one of the most frequently mentioned topics in Physics literature and other means of dissemination, it is also one of the least understood. Oddly enough, in the wonderful book "Turning the world inside out"…
This note is sketching a simple and natural mathematical construction for explaining the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. It employs nonstandard analysis and is based on Feynman's interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty…
The reader is reminded of several puzzles involving randomness. These may be ill-posed, and if well-posed there is sometimes a solution that uses probabilistic intuition in a special way. Various examples are presented including the well…
"Ever since the advent of modern quantum mechanics in the late 1920's, the idea has been prevalent that the classical laws of probability cease, in some sense, to be valid in the new theory. [...] The primary object of this presentation is…
Probabilistic artificial neural networks offer intriguing prospects for enabling the uncertainty of artificial intelligence methods to be described explicitly in their function; however, the development of techniques that quantify…
In studying randomized search heuristics, a frequent quantity of interest is the first time a (real-valued) stochastic process obtains (or passes) a certain value. The processes under investigation commonly show a bias towards this goal,…
Coalescent theory is the study of random processes where particles may join each other to form clusters as time evolves. These notes provide an introduction to some aspects of the mathematics of coalescent processes and their applications…
Have you ever played or watched a game of pool? If so, you have already seen a billiard system in action. In mathematics and physics, a billiard system describes a ball that moves in straight lines and bounces off walls. Despite these…
In this paper we deal with the classical problem of random cover times. We investigate the distribution of the time it takes for a Poisson process of cylinders to cover a set $A \subset \mathbb{R}^d.$ This Poisson process of cylinders is…
We develop a systematic approach to quantum probability as a theory of rational betting in quantum gambles. In these games of chance the agent is betting in advance on the outcomes of several (finitely many) incompatible measurements. One…
In the paper it is proven that the two-players turn-based stochastic game "Risk or Safety" has a unique solution. Both players need to play the same strategy if they want to maximize their winning chances. An analytical method based on the…
Physicists have, hitherto, mostly adopted a frequentist conception of probability, according to which probability statements apply only to ensembles. It is argued that we should, instead, adopt an epistemic, or Bayesian conception, in which…
Astronomy is an observationally-led subject where chance discoveries play an important role. A whole range of such discoveries is continually made, from the trivial to the highly significant. What is generally needed is for luck to strike…
Philosophers now seem to agree that frequentism is an untenable strategy to explain the meaning of probabilities. Nevertheless, I want to revive frequentism, and I will do so by grounding probabilities on typicality in the same way as the…
The act of a person juggling can be viewed as a Markov process if we assume that the juggler throws to random heights. I make this association for the simplest reasonable model of random juggling and compute the steady state probabilities…
Given a set of coins arranged in a line, we remove heads-up coins one at a time and flip any adjacent coins after each removal. The coin-removal problem is to determine for which arrangements of coins it is possible to remove all of the…
This note explains why a large class of fair, or reversible "money games", i.e., stochastic models of wealth redistribution among agents, lead to steady states described by canonical and microcanonical distributions. The games considered…
Positivity, the assumption that every unique combination of confounding variables that occurs in a population has a non-zero probability of an action, can be further delineated as deterministic positivity and stochastic positivity. Here, we…
We consider the urn setting with two different objects, ``good'' and ``bad'', and analyze the number of draws without replacement until a good object is picked. Although the expected number of draws for this setting is a standard textbook…