Related papers: Distances between the winning numbers in Lottery
How much does luck matter to a criminal defendant in a jury trial? We use rich data on jury selection to causally estimate how parties who are randomly assigned a less favorable jury (as proxied by whether their attorneys exhaust their…
Among three natural numbers there is always one which is larger than or equal to the Nim sum of the remaining two numbers. This amazing fact has many applications.
We consider $n$-sided dice whose face values lie between $1$ and $n$ and whose faces sum to $n(n+1)/2$. For two dice $A$ and $B$, define $A \succ B$ if it is more likely for $A$ to show a higher face than $B$. Suppose $k$ such dice…
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…
We give an algorithm for solving stochastic parity games with almost-sure winning conditions on {\it lossy channel systems}, under the constraint that both players are restricted to finite-memory strategies. First, we describe a general…
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…
We analyze a coin-based game with two players where, before starting the game, each player selects a string of length $n$ comprised of coin tosses. They alternate turns, choosing the outcome of a coin toss according to specific rules. As a…
We give an example of two $n\times n$ chess positions, $A$ and $B$, such that (1) there is a sequence $\sigma$ of legal chess moves leading from $A$ to $B$; (2) the length of $\sigma$ cannot be less than $\exp \Theta(n)$.
In this paper we present many congruences for several Ap\'ery-like sequences.
We prove that there are infinitely often pairs of primes much closer than the average spacing between primes - almost within the square root of the average spacing. We actually prove a more general result concerning the set of values taken…
Patterns of wins and losses in pairwise contests, such as occur in sports and games, consumer research and paired comparison studies, and human and animal social hierarchies, are commonly analyzed using probabilistic models that allow one…
2048 is a single player video game, played by millions mostly on mobile devices. We prove rigorously for the first time that there is an algorithm with winning probability at least 0.99969, and that there is a strategy for achieving the 256…
We indulge in what mathematicians call frivolous activities. In Arithmetic Billiards, a ball is bouncing around in a rectangle. In Parity Checkers we place checkers on a checkerboard under certain parity constraints. Both activities turn…
Motivated by the controversy in the chess community, where Hikaru Nakamura, a renowned grandmaster, has posted multiple impressive winning streaks over the years on the online platform chess.com, we derive the probabilities of various types…
We introduce a "high probability" framework for repeated games with incomplete information. In our non-equilibrium setting, players aim to guarantee a certain payoff with high probability, rather than in expected value. We provide a high…
Transfinite set theory including the axiom of choice supplies the following basic theorems: (1) Mappings between infinite sets can always be completed, such that at least one of the sets is exhausted. (2) The real numbers can be well…
We define the ``shift-match number'' for a binary string and we compute the probability of occurrence of a given string as a subsequence in longer strings in terms of its shift-match number. We thus prove that the string matching…
Evolutionary games on networks traditionally involve the same game at each interaction. Here we depart from this assumption by considering mixed games, where the game played at each interaction is drawn uniformly at random from a set of two…
The numbers game is a one-player game played on a finite simple graph with certain "amplitudes" assigned to its edges and with an initial assignment of real numbers to its nodes. The moves of the game successively transform the numbers at…
The following problem is considered. Two players are each required to allocate a quota of~$n$ counters among~$k$ boxes labelled~$1,2,\ldots,k$. At times $t=1,2,3,\ldots$ a random box is identified; the probability of choosing box~$i$…