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arXiv · 1104.3049

When only the last one will do

Johan Wästlund
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Abstract

An unknown positive number of items arrive at independent uniformly distributed times in the interval [0,1] to a selector, whose task is to pick online the last one. We show that under the assumption of an adversary determining the number of items, there exists a game-theoretical equilibrium, in other words the selector and the adversary both possess optimal strategies. The probability of success of the selector with the optimal strategy is estimated numerically to 0.352917000207196.

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Johan Wästlund. 2011-04-15. When only the last one will do. https://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3049

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