Re: virus: Virus Lexicon, etc

Duane Daniel Hewitt (ddhewitt@acs.ucalgary.ca)
Thu, 20 Apr 1995 08:32:26 -0600 (MDT)


On Thu, 13 Apr 1995, David McFadzean wrote:

> control according Dennet in his excellent book on free will, _Elbow Room_.
> I'll have to add that to the Virus reading list.

I would like to borrow a copy, if you have one.

> >> Actually I think it is worthwhile to check your assumptions more often
> >> than that. I think this dilemma (exploration vs. exploitation) is modelled
> >> by the 2-armed bandit thought experiment.

How often should you check your assumptions? If you check them too often
then you may be wasting time that may be spent more constuctively
creating meaning.

> The 2-armed bandit is like its familiar single-armed Las Vegas counterpart.
> Each arm has an associated probability of returning a cash prize, one is
> higher than the other, but you don't know which is which. The dilemma is
> how long you spend testing the bandit before deciding which arm is likely
> the one with the higher probability (and, ipso facto, higher expected
> value).

Is your goal solely to determine which is the higher probability or is it
to determine whether you can make money on the probability of one of the
arms? If the former is your goal are there statistical methods to solve
this problem?

Duane