Related papers: Possible probability and irreducibility of balance…
Sets of desirable gambles constitute a quite general type of uncertainty model with an interesting geometrical interpretation. We give a general discussion of such models and their rationality criteria. We study exchangeability assessments…
A famous (and hard) chess problem asks what is the maximum number of safe squares possible in placing $n$ queens on an $n\times n$ board. We examine related problems from placing $n$ rooks. We prove that as $n\to\infty$, the probability…
The problem of creating a three-sided dice with the probability of it landing on each of its sides being equal to 1/3 has been around for many years. Various approaches have been attempted, but as different authors achieved at different…
We consider the permutation analogue of Penney's game for words. Two players, in order, each choose a permutation of length $k\ge3$; then a sequence of independent random values from a continuous distribution is generated, until the…
We study how much data a Bayesian observer needs to correctly infer the relative likelihoods of two events when both events are arbitrarily rare. Each period, either a blue die or a red die is tossed. The two dice land on side $1$ with…
We give a detailed proof, in the identically distributed case, of a conjecture of Feige about the maximum probability that the sum of n independent non-negative integer valued random variables, each of mean 1, exceeds n. The general case is…
The paper is split in two parts: in the first part, we construct the exact likelihood for a discretely observed rough differential equation, driven by a piecewise linear path. In the second part, we use this likelihood in order to construct…
We consider the problem of upper bounding the number of circular transpositions needed to sort a permutation. It is well known that any permutation can be sorted using at most $n(n-1)/2$ adjacent transpositions. We show that, if we allow…
Have you ever taken a disputed decision by tossing a coin and checking its landing side? This ancestral "heads or tails" practice is still widely used when facing undecided alternatives since it relies on the intuitive fairness of…
Balanced knockout tournaments are ubiquitous in sports competitions and are also used in decision-making and elections. The traditional computational question, that asks to compute a draw (optimal draw) that maximizes the winning…
Let $(P,\leq)$ be a finite poset (partially ordered set), where $P$ has cardinality $n$. Consider linear extensions of $P$ as permutations $x_1x_2\cdots x_n$ in one-line notation. For distinct elements $x,y\in P$, we define…
A collection of $n$ random events is said to be $(n - 1)$-wise independent if any $n - 1$ events among them are mutually independent. We characterise all probability measures with respect to which $n$ random events are $(n - 1)$-wise…
When a thick cylindrical coin is tossed in the air and lands without bouncing on an inelastic substrate, it ends up on its face or its side. We account for the rigid body dynamics of spin and precession and calculate the probability…
This work studies the average complexity of solving structured polynomial systems that are characterized by a low evaluation cost, as opposed to the dense random model previously used. Firstly, we design a continuation algorithm that…
We continue the exploration of a question of dice relabeling posed by Gallian and Rusin: Given $n$ dice, each labeled 1 through $m$, how many ways are there to relabel the dice without changing the frequencies of the possible sums? We…
Probability forecasts are intended to account for the uncertainties inherent in forecasting. It is suggested that from an end-user's point of view probability is not necessarily sufficient to reflect uncertainties that are not simply the…
There has been much recent interest in random graphs sampled uniformly from the n-vertex graphs in a suitable structured class, such as the class of all planar graphs. Here we consider a general 'bridge-addable' class of graphs - if a graph…
We show how to simulate a roll of a fair $n$-sided die by one flip of a biased coin with probability $1/n$ of coming up heads, followed by $3\lfloor\log_2 n \rfloor+1$ flips of a fair coin.
Chances of a gambler are always lower than chances of a casino in the case of an ideal, mathematically perfect roulette, if the capital of the gambler is limited and the minimum and maximum allowed bets are limited by the casino. However, a…
A balanced pair in a finite ordered set $P=(V,\leq)$ is a pair $(x,y)$ of elements of $V$ such that the proportion of linear extensions of $P$ that put $x$ before $y$ is in the real interval $[1/3, 2/3]$. We prove that every finite $N$-free…