Related papers: The Lindy Effect
Rare events refer to qualitatively unlikely events whose realization can nevertheless have important consequences. Typically, the prediction of the kinetics of these events relies on Arrhenius laws, with exponentially distributed waiting…
The Risk Ratio (RR) is the ratio of the outcome among the exposed to risk of the outcome among the unexposed. This is a simple concept, which makes one wonder why it has not gained the same popularity as the odds ratio. Using logistic…
Understanding how the causal effect of a treatment evolves over time, including the potential for waning, is important for informed decisions on treatment discontinuation or repetition. For example, waning vaccine protection influences…
The scale and terms of aggregate borrowing in an economy depend on the manner in which wealth is distributed across potential creditors with heterogeneous beliefs about the future. This distribution evolves over time as uncertainty is…
Decision-makers abhor uncertainty, and it is certainly true that the less there is of it the better. However, recognizing that uncertainty is part of the equation, particularly for deciding on environmental policy, is a prerequisite for…
Based on data from a large-scale experiment with human subjects, we conclude that the logarithm of probability to guess a word in context (unpredictability) depends linearly on the word length. This result holds both for poetry and prose,…
In many situations, the decision maker observes items in sequence and needs to determine whether or not to retain a particular item immediately after it is observed. Any decision rule creates a set of items that are selected. We consider…
We show the existence of rigid combinatorial objects which previously were not known to exist. Specifically, for a wide range of the underlying parameters, we show the existence of non-trivial orthogonal arrays, $t$-designs, and $t$-wise…
What is time? Why does it "flow" and why are we sure that it flows from past towards future? Why is there such a gigantic distinction between the Past of our world, which we believe to be fixed, and the Future, which we consider…
Humanity has been fascinated by the pursuit of fortune since time immemorial, and many successful outcomes benefit from strokes of luck. But success is subject to complexity, uncertainty, and change - and at times becoming increasingly…
This paper attempts to find a relationship between agents' risk aversion and inequality of incomes. Specifically, a model is proposed for the evolution in time of surplus/deficit distribution, and the long-time distributions are…
This paper is concerned with the well known Jeffreys-Lindley paradox. In a Bayesian set up, the so-called paradox arises when a point null hypothesis is tested and an objective prior is sought for the alternative hypothesis. In particular,…
We use a controlled laboratory experiment to study the causal impact of income decreases within a time period on redistribution decisions at the end of that period, in an environment where we keep fixed the sum of incomes over the period.…
Optimizing recommender systems based on user interaction data is mainly seen as a problem of dealing with selection bias, where most existing work assumes that interactions from different users are independent. However, it has been shown…
Theoretical analysis proves that human survivability is dominated by an unusual physical, rather than biological, mechanism, which yields an exact law. The law agrees with all experimental data, but, contrary to existing theories, it is the…
The phenomenon of local dynamical inhomogeneity of time is predicted, which implies that the course of time along the trajectory of motion of a particle in the inertial reference frames moving relative to each other depends on the state of…
Bayesian statistics is concerned with conducting posterior inference for the unknown quantities in a given statistical model. Conventional Bayesian inference requires the specification of a probabilistic model for the observed data, and the…
When a student fails an exam, do we tend to blame their effort or the test's difficulty? Attribution, defined as how reasons are assigned to event outcomes, shapes perceptions, reinforces stereotypes, and influences decisions. Attribution…
The outcomes of elections, product sales, and the structure of social connections are all determined by the choices individuals make when presented with a set of options, so understanding the factors that contribute to choice is crucial. Of…
We follow the time sequence of binary elastic collisions in a small collection of hard-core particles. Intervals between the collisions are characterized by the numbers of collisions of different pairs in a given time. It was shown…