Parrondo's Paradox
Dr. Stewart Ethier
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
Abstract
Parrondo's paradox, due to Spanish physicist Juan Parrondo
(1996), states that a player may alternate regularly or randomly
between two negative-expectation games to achieve a positive-
expectation game. There are a variety of games that exhibit the
Parrondo paradox, including capital-dependent games, history-
dependent games, multi-player games, and cooperative games. This talk
will survey the subject and also discuss some work in progress
concerning the asymptotic behavior of the Parrondo player's profit.