5,286 research outputs found
Discrepancy convergence for the drunkard's walk on the sphere
We analyze the drunkard's walk on the unit sphere with step size theta and
show that the walk converges in order constant/sin^2(theta) steps in the
discrepancy metric. This is an application of techniques we develop for
bounding the discrepancy of random walks on Gelfand pairs generated by
bi-invariant measures. In such cases, Fourier analysis on the acting group
admits tractable computations involving spherical functions. We advocate the
use of discrepancy as a metric on probabilities for state spaces with isometric
group actions.Comment: 20 pages; to appear in Electron. J. Probab.; related work at
http://www.math.hmc.edu/~su/papers.htm
Consensus-halving via Theorems of Borsuk-Ulam and Tucker
In this paper we show how theorems of Borsuk-Ulam and Tucker can be used to construct a consensus-halving: a division of an object into two portions so that each of n people believe the portions are equally split. Moreover, the division takes at most n cuts, which is best possible. This extends prior work using methods from combinatorial topology to solve fair division problems. Several applications of consensus-halving are discussed.
A simplicial algorithm approach to Nash equilibria in concave games
In this paper we demonstrate a new method for computing approximate Nash equilibria in n-person games. Strategy spaces are assumed to be represented by simplices, while payoff functions are assumed to be concave. Our procedure relies on a simplicial algorithm that traces paths through the set of strategy profiles using a new variant of Sperner's Lemma for labelled triangulations of simplotopes, which we prove in this paper. Our algorithm uses a labelling derived from the satisficing function of Geanakoplos (2003) and can be used to compute approximate Nash equilibria for payoff functions that are not necessarily linear. Finally, in bimatrix games, we can compare our simplicial algorithm to the combinatorial algorithm proposed by Lemke and Howson (1964).simplicial algorithm, Nash equilibria, strategy labelling
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