Related papers: A Parrondo Paradox in Reliability Theory
We study a quantum walk in one-dimension using two different "coin" operators. By mixing two operators, both of which give a biased walk with negative expectation value for the walker position, it is possible to reverse the bias through…
Coordination and cooperation are among the most important issues of game theory. Recently, the attention turned to game theory on graphs and social networks. Encouraged by interesting results obtained in quantum evolutionary game analysis,…
In the context of quantum information theory, "quantization" of various mathematical and computational constructions is said to occur upon the replacement, at various points in the construction, of the classical randomization notion of…
Human beings like to believe they are in control of their destiny. This ubiquitous trait seems to increase motivation and persistence, and is probably evolutionarily adaptive. But how good really is our ability to control? How successful is…
The principle that rational agents should maximize expected utility or choiceworthiness is intuitively plausible in many ordinary cases of decision-making under uncertainty. But it is less plausible in cases of extreme, low-probability risk…
Parrondo games with one-dimensional spatial dependence were introduced by Toral and extended to the two-dimensional setting by Mihailovi\'c and Rajkovi\'c. $MN$ players are arranged in an $M\times N$ array. There are three games, the fair,…
Based on Brownian ratchets, a counter-intuitive phenomenon has recently emerged -- namely, that two losing games can yield, when combined, a paradoxical tendency to win. A restriction of this phenomenon is that the rules depend on the…
Let game B be Toral's cooperative Parrondo game with (one-dimensional) spatial dependence, parameterized by N (3 or more) and p_0,p_1,p_2,p_3 in [0,1], and let game A be the special case p_0=p_1=p_2=p_3=1/2. Let mu_B (resp., mu_(1/2,1/2))…
We consider a setting in which a principal gets to choose which game from some given set is played by a group of agents. The principal would like to choose a game that favors one of the players, the social preferences of the players, or the…
We identify a choiceless variation of the box game paradox, in which players predict unknown real numbers with near-perfect accuracy despite lacking any useful information. We also verify that choice is necessary in the solution of the…
Conventional noncooperative game theory hypothesizes that the joint strategy of a set of players in a game must satisfy an "equilibrium concept". All other joint strategies are considered impossible; the only issue is what equilibrium…
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…
The antique Mills Futurity slot machine has two unusual features. First, if a player loses 10 times in a row, the 10 lost coins are returned. Second, the payout distribution varies from coup to coup in a manner that is nonrandom and…
Dormancy is a costly adaptive strategy that is widespread among living organisms inhabiting diverse environments. We explore mathematical models of predator-prey systems, in order to assess the impact of prey dormancy on the competition…
Consider the following game: You are given two indistinguishable envelopes, each containing money. One contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep the money it contains. Having chosen an envelope, you are given…
In this article, I will present a paradox whose purpose is to draw your attention to an important topic in finance, concerning the non-independence of the financial returns (non-ergodic hypothesis). In this paradox, we have two people…
We present a quantum implementation of Parrondo's game with randomly switched strategies using 1) a quantum walk as a source of ``randomness'' and 2) a completely positive (CP) map as a randomized evolution. The game exhibits the same…
We show that for periodic non-autonomous discrete dynamical systems, even when a common fixed point for each of the autonomous associated dynamical systems is repeller, this fixed point can became a local attractor for the whole system,…
We propose a new model of provenance, based on a game-theoretic approach to query evaluation. First, we study games G in their own right, and ask how to explain that a position x in G is won, lost, or drawn. The resulting notion of game…
Many writers have observed that default logics appear to contain the "lottery paradox" of probability theory. This arises when a default "proof by contradiction" lets us conclude that a typical X is not a Y where Y is an unusual subclass of…