Related papers: An Instance-Based Algorithm for Deciding the Bias …
We address a well-known problem in combinatorics involving the identification of counterfeit coins with a systematic approach. The methodology can be applied to cases where the total number of coins is exceedingly large such that brute…
In 1976, Knuth and Yao presented an algorithm for sampling from a finite distribution using flips of a fair coin that on average used the optimal number of flips. Here we show how to easily run their algorithm for the special case of…
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…
We study the class of protocols for weak quantum coin flipping introduced by Spekkens and Rudolph (quant-ph/0202118). We show that, for any protocol in this class, one party can win the coin flip with probability at least $1/\sqrt{2}$.
On March 16, 2024, Daniel Litt, in an X-post, proposed the following brainteaser: "Flip a fair coin 100 times. It gives a sequence of heads (H) and tails (T). For each HH in the sequence of flips, Alice gets a point; for each HT, Bob does,…
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…
Biased-coin designs are used in clinical trials to allocate treatments with some randomness while maintaining approximately equal allocation. More recent rules are compared with Efron's [Biometrika 58 (1971) 403-417] biased-coin rule and…
Consider a universal Turing machine that produces a partial or total function (or a binary stream), based on the answers to the binary queries that it makes during the computation. We study the probability that the machine will produce a…
This paper is inspired by the PQ penny flip game. It employs group-theoretic concepts to study the original game and also its possible extensions. We show that the PQ penny flip game can be associated with the dihedral group $D_{8}$. We…
Optimal estimation of a coin's bias using noisy data is surprisingly different from the same problem with noiseless data. We study this problem using entropy risk to quantify estimators' accuracy. We generalize the "add Beta" estimators…
"God does not play dice. He flips coins instead." And though for some reason He has denied us quantum bit commitment. And though for some reason he has even denied us strong coin flipping. He has, in His infinite mercy, granted us quantum…
A {\em leader election} algorithm is an elimination process that divides recursively into tow subgroups an initial group of n items, eliminates one subgroup and continues the procedure until a subgroup is of size 1. In this paper the biased…
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…
We present new algorithms for estimating and testing \emph{collision probability}, a fundamental measure of the spread of a discrete distribution that is widely used in many scientific fields. We describe an algorithm that satisfies…
Consider algorithms with unbounded computation time that probe the entries of the adjacency matrix of an $n$ vertex graph, and need to output a clique. We show that if the input graph is drawn at random from $G_{n,\frac{1}{2}}$ (and hence…
Tossing a coin is the most elementary Monte Carlo experiment. In a computer the coin is replaced by a pseudo random number generator. It can be shown analytically and by exact enumerations that popular random number generators are not…
Let $p>3$ be a prime and $b\ge 2$ an integer such that $p$ does not divide $b$. Then $1/p$ has a periodic digit expansion with respect to the basis $b$. The length $q$ of the period is the (multiplicative) order of $b$ mod $p$. In the case…
This paper studies the important problem of quantum classification of Boolean functions from a entirely novel perspective. Typically, quantum classification algorithms allow us to classify functions with a probability of $1.0$, if we are…
We study the problem of generating a random variate $X$ from a finite discrete probability distribution $P$ using an entropy source of independent fair coin flips. A classic result from Knuth and Yao shows that the optimal expected number…
We study the Hamilton cycle problem with input a random graph G=G(n,p) in two settings. In the first one, G is given to us in the form of randomly ordered adjacency lists while in the second one we are given the adjacency matrix of G. In…