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Survival in unfair conflict: Odds, resources, and random walk models
Author(s) -
Marma Victor J.,
Deutsch Karl W.
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830180502
Subject(s) - analogy , random walk , odds , mathematical economics , computer science , operations research , citizen journalism , process (computing) , work (physics) , economics , mathematics , epistemology , statistics , engineering , mechanical engineering , philosophy , logistic regression , machine learning , world wide web , operating system
The classical gambler's ruin problem is viewed as a general model of conflict between opponents of unequal resources and capabilities. The gambling situation where two players have unequal resources and play a repetitive game, perhaps biased in favor of one player or the other, until one player loses his entire stock of resources can be modeled mathematically by a random walk process with absorbing barriers. The classical problem is extended to include analysis of the situation where it is possible for the game to terminate before either player has been completely ruined. Analysis of the gambling situation is presented in detail and the fundamental work presented here is serving as a basis for current work being done on: (1) construction of a modified random walk analogy to the famous Lanchester formulation of conflict and, (2) development of a mathematical model of guerrilla warfare.