Parrondo's paradox

Parrondo's paradox, a paradox in game theory, has been described as: A combination of losing strategies becomes a winning strategy.[1] It is named after its creator, Juan Parrondo, who discovered the paradox in 1996. A more explanatory description is:

There exist pairs of games, each with a higher probability of losing than winning, for which it is possible to construct a winning strategy by playing the games alternately.

Parrondo devised the paradox in connection with his analysis of the Brownian ratchet, a thought experiment about a machine that can purportedly extract energy from random heat motions popularized by physicist Richard Feynman. However, the paradox disappears when rigorously analyzed.[2] Winning strategies consisting of various combinations of losing strategies were explored in biology before Parrondo's paradox was published.[3]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Shu, Jian-Jun; Wang, Q.-W. (2014). "Beyond Parrondo's paradox". Scientific Reports. 4 (4244): 4244. arXiv:1403.5468. Bibcode:2014NatSR...4E4244S. doi:10.1038/srep04244. PMC 5379438. PMID 24577586.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference jansen1998 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).