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arXiv · 1703.03434

Does Greed Help a Forager Survive?

U. Bhat·S. Redner·O. Benichou
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Abstract

We investigate the role of greed on the lifetime of a random-walking forager on an initially resource-rich lattice. Whenever the forager lands on a food-containing site, all the food there is eaten and the forager can hop $\mathcal{S}$ more steps without food before starving. Upon reaching an empty site, the forager comes one time unit closer to starvation. The forager is also greedy---given a choice to move to an empty or to a food-containing site in its local neighborhood, the forager moves preferentially towards food. Surprisingly, the forager lifetime varies non-monotonically with greed, with different senses of the non-monotonicity in one and two dimensions. Also unexpectedly, the forager lifetime in one dimension has a huge peak for very negative greed.

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U. Bhat, S. Redner, O. Benichou. 2017-03-09. Does Greed Help a Forager Survive?. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.95.062119

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