Lose to Win? It's Not Impossible: A Computer Simulation of Coin-Tossing Games in C++ to Test Parrondo's Paradox

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective is to explain Parrondo's Paradox and provide an example and variation of it by using the C++ programming language to program coin-tossing games. Methods/Materials Parrondo's Paradox is a recent discovery stating that games designed to lose can be combined into one game that will win. The project required me to program games in the C++ programming language that illustrate the Paradox. I then modified the values that define each game, such as the variables e (a very small number that affects the chances of winning) and m (which affects the way the games are played), and then tested the simulation by combining the games and playing them. Results These games confirmed my hypothesis that a simulation of two losing games designed according to Parrondo's Paradox will result in one winning game when combined. My two games, when played alone, lost. But when I played them together, they won. Conclusions/Discussion I learned that simulating the games in C++ is an effective way of testing the Paradox, as only a computer program could create the biased coins I needed for the coin-tossing games.

Competition history

• CSEF 2003 Mathematics & Software · Entry J1214

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Computational Sciences projects
• CSEF Computational Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2003 project