Talk:Parrondo's paradox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Game theory, an attempt to improve, grow, and standardize Wikipedia's articles related to Game theory. We need your help! Join in \| Fix a red link \| Add content \| Weigh in

???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale. [FAQ]
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating within game theory.

[edit] The math second illustrative example

I don't think the math example is right. The probability of game B is (2/3)(3/4) + (1/3)(1/10) - ε which is 16/30 - ε. So game B is a winning game for ε sufficiently small.

I think a correct game B would have $P 2 = (3 / 4) - 2ε$ and $P 3 = ε$ .

I'll leave it up to someone else to verify if I'm right or to come up with a better example. Also, I can believe the following statement (since it is the point of Parrondo's paradox), but it's not obvious and doesn't follow from anything in the example: "However, when played alternately, it results in a winning combination as the outcome of one decides the nature of the other."

[edit] Problem of evil

I removed the following paragraph from the article:

Parrondo's paradox can interestingly be expanded as an objection to the problem of evil. It is true by Parrondo's paradox that sequential negative events can result in a positive outcome, suggesting that the problem of evil may ignore such possibilities. Parrondo's paradox effectively allows every negative event to eventually have a positive outcome. Empirically, President Clinton's approval ratings rose above pre-scandal levels after his admission of his sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky. Both his sexual action and his admission could be seen as losing strategies regarding presidential approval ratings, but the American public saw his apology as an honorable deed, fulfilling Parrondo's Paradox.

First, I'm worried about whether it is orignal research. It needs to be sourced if it is to be re-introduced. Even if sourced, I think that they will make the article harder (rather than easier) to understand, because it introduces a confusion. Parrondo's paradox is not paradoxical because of the simple addage "to wrongs don't make a right", it is rather more complex. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 07:59, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I fully support what you did. I have not been able to keep update with the happenings of the page and saw the problem just now when you edited the talk page. Even I feel that the paragraph is Original Research. Parrando's Paradox should not be used to correlate events when no such justification exists. I don't know what to do with "agriculture" as it too is Original Research. There hasn't been any mathematical modelling of the phenomenon to establish a causation. Even if its true, the events are correlated, but causation is yet to be proved. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 08:11, 16 April 2006 (UTC)