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Neil F Johnson

Publications and source records attributed to Neil F Johnson.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Winning combinations of history-dependent games.

The Parrondo effect describes the seemingly paradoxical situation in which two losing games can, when combined, become a winning game [Parrondo, Harmer, and Abbott, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 24 (2000)]. Here, we generalize this analysis to the case where both games are history dependent, i.e., there is an intrinsic memory in the dynamics of each game. Results are presented for the cases of both random and periodic switching between the two games.

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Optimal combinations of imperfect objects.

We consider how to make best use of imperfect objects, such as defective analog and digital components. We show that perfect, or near-perfect, devices can be constructed by taking combinations of such defects. Any remaining objects can be recycled efficiently. In addition to its practical applications, our "defect combination problem" provides a novel generalization of classical optimization problems.

Journal Article↗