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We present new versions of the Parrondo's paradox by which a losing game can be turned into winning by including a mechanism that allows redistribution of the capital amongst an ensemble of players. This shows that, for this particular…
We present a method for estimating the probabilities of outcomes of a quantum circuit using Monte Carlo sampling techniques applied to a quasiprobability representation. Our estimate converges to the true quantum probability at a rate…
A variation on Janowski's cubeful equity model is proposed for cube handling in backgammon money games. Instead of approximating the cubeful take point as an interpolation between the dead and live cube limits, a new model is developed…
This paper describes the dependence of market-based statistical moments of returns on statistical moments and correlations of the current and past trade values. We use Markowitz's definition of value weighted return of a portfolio as the…
We consider an equity-linked contract whose payoff depends on the lifetime of policy holder and the stock price. We assume the limited capital for hedging and we provide with the best strategy for an insurance company in the meaning of so…
This paper deals with the so-called Boltzmann billiard, that is, a billiard subjected to a central force of the type $V(r)=-\alpha/r-\beta/r^2$, $\alpha$ and $\beta$ being positive constants, and with a straight reflection table. In the…
We present Frost Training, a method for improving Monte Carlo-based policy optimization for a large family of LLM-as-a-judge tasks called Cross-Entropy Games. The key idea is to exploit the gradient of the reward function in embedding…
A decision must often be made between heavy-tailed and Gaussian errors for a regression or a time series model, and the t-distribution is frequently used when it is assumed that the errors are heavy-tailed distributed. The performance of…
We discuss the relative merits of optimistic and randomized approaches to exploration in reinforcement learning. Optimistic approaches presented in the literature apply an optimistic boost to the value estimate at each state-action pair and…
The games of prediction with expert advice are considered in this paper. We present some modification of Kalai and Vempala algorithm of following the perturbed leader for the case of unrestrictedly large one-step gains. We show that in…
In a recent article in American Scientist, Theodore Hill described a coin-tossing game whose pay-off is the number of heads over the total number of throws. Suppose that at a given point during the game you have 5 heads and 3 tails, should…
In a guessing game, players guess the value of a random real number selected using some probability density function. The winner may be determined in various ways; for example, a winner can be a player whose guess is closest in magnitude to…
Developing a better understanding of surprising or counterintuitive phenomena has constituted a significant portion of deep learning research in recent years. These include double descent, grokking, and the lottery ticket hypothesis --…
The paper investigates gender differences in entrepreneurship by exploiting a large-scale land lottery in Oklahoma at the turn of the 20$^{\text{th}}$ century. Lottery winners claimed land in the order in which their names were drawn, so…
In this paper we present an asset allocation strategy based on the maximization of the Sortino ratio. Unlike the Sharpe ratio, the Sortino ratio penalizes negative return variances only. The resulting allocation is valid for any time…
We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. An ordered deck of $n$ cards labeled $1$ up to $n$ is riffle-shuffled exactly one time. Given a value $p\in(0{,}1)\setminus\{\frac12\}$, the riffle shuffle is assumed to be…
We consider computation of market values of bonus payments in multi-state with-profit life insurance. The bonus scheme consists of additional benefits bought according to a dividend strategy that depends on the past realization of financial…
Briscola is a traditional Italian trick-taking card game whose simplest form is played by two players. Popular folklore credits victory almost entirely to the player who is dealt more cards of the trump suit (the so-called \emph{briscola}),…
Many artificial intelligences (AIs) are randomized. One can be lucky or unlucky with the random seed; we quantify this effect and show that, maybe contrarily to intuition, this is far from being negligible. Then, we apply two different…
This paper proposes a new way of evaluating the accuracy and validity of probabilistic forecasts that change over time (such as an in-game win probability model, or an election forecast). Under this approach, each model to be evaluated is…