Related papers: The Inversion Paradox and Ranking Methods in Tourn…
The recently discovered Parrondo's paradox claims that two losing games can result, under random or periodic alternation of their dynamics, in a winning game: "losing+losing=winning". In this paper we follow Parrondo's philosophy of…
Negative dependence of sequences of random variables is often an interesting characteristic of their distribution, as well as a useful tool for studying various asymptotic results, including central limit theorems, Poisson approximations,…
We discuss some aspects of Astumian suggestions that combination of biased games (Parrondo's paradox) can explain performance of molecular motors. Unfortunately the model is flawed by explicit asymmetry overlooked by the author. In…
The group draw of a sports tournament requires assigning teams to groups of (almost) the same size. The most important criteria for a draw procedure are balance, randomness, and transparency, which could not be satisfied simultaneously if…
We study the problem of scheduling asynchronous round-robin tournaments. We consider three measures of a schedule that concern the quality and fairness of a tournament. We show that the schedule generated by the well-known "circle design"…
We analyze the susceptibility of instant runoff voting (IRV) to a lesser-studied paradox known as a \emph{reinforcement paradox}, which occurs when candidate $X$ wins under IRV in two distinct elections but $X$ loses in the combined…
Pavlov, a well-known strategy in game theory, has been shown to have some advantages in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) game. However, this strategy can be exploited by inveterate defectors. We modify this strategy to mitigate the…
Simpson's Paradox is a well-known phenomenon in statistical science, where the relationship between the response variable $X$ and a certain explanatory factor of interest $A$ reverses when an additional factor $B_1$ is considered. This…
Knockout tournaments, also known as single-elimination or cup tournaments, are a popular form of sports competitions. In the standard probabilistic setting, for each pairing of players, one of the players wins the game with a certain (a…
In competitive games, it is common to assign each player a real number rating signifying their skill level. A rating system is a procedure by which player ratings are adjusted upwards each time they win, or downwards each time they lose.…
We analyze different methods of sorting and selecting a set of objects by their intrinsic value, via pairwise comparisons whose outcome is uncertain. After discussing the limits of repeated Round Robins, two new methods are presented: The…
In a round-robin tournament, a team may lack the incentive to win if its final rank does not depend on the outcome of the matches still to be played. This paper introduces a classification scheme to determine these weakly (where one team is…
An $n$-tournament $T$ with vertex set $V$ is simple if there is no subset $M$ of $V$ such that $2\leq \left \vert M\right \vert \leq n-1$ and for every $x\in V\setminus M$, either $M\rightarrow x$ or $x \rightarrow M$. The simplicity index…
We study the phenomenon of intransitivity in models of dice and voting. First, we follow a recent thread of research for $n$-sided dice with pairwise ordering induced by the probability, relative to $1/2$, that a throw from one die is…
A Condorcet voting scheme chooses a winning candidate as one who defeats all others in pairwise majority rule. We provide a review which includes the rigorous mathematical treatment for calculating the limiting probability of a Condorcet…
Toral introduced so-called cooperative Parrondo games, in which there are N players (3 or more) arranged in a circle. At each turn one player is randomly chosen to play. He plays either game A or game B, depending on the strategy. Game A…
We introduce the problem of ranking with slot constraints, which can be used to model a wide range of application problems -- from college admission with limited slots for different majors, to composing a stratified cohort of eligible…
Condorcet's paradox is a fundamental result in social choice theory which states that there exist elections in which, no matter which candidate wins, a majority of voters prefer a different candidate. In fact, even if we can select any $k$…
Probabilistic properties of tennis scoring systems are examined and compared with best-of-K systems. A model, where each player has his/her own probability of winning his/her service point and which remains invariant for the duration of the…
The classical paradox of social choice theory asserts that there is no fair way to deterministically select a winner in an election among more than two candidates; the only definite collective preferences are between individual pairs of…