Effective Martingales with Restricted Wagers

TL;DR

This paper investigates how restricting the wager set of computable martingales to integers or specific rational subsets affects their predictive power and randomness notions, providing a complete classification of these effects.

Contribution

It characterizes the relationships between nine different notions of computable randomness based on wager restrictions and success criteria, resolving open questions in the field.

Findings

Five linearly ordered classes of randomness notions identified.

Complete characterization of relations between different wager and success criteria.

Resolved several open questions from prior research.

Abstract

The classic model of computable randomness considers martingales that take real or rational values. Recent work by Bienvenu et al. (2012) and Teutsch (2014) shows that fundamental features of the classic model change when the martingales take integer values. We compare the prediction power of martingales whose wagers belong to three different subsets of rational numbers: (a) all rational numbers, (b) rational numbers excluding a punctured neighbourhood of 0, and (c) integers. We also consider three different success criteria: (i) accumulating an infinite amount of money, (ii) consuming an infinite amount of money, and (iii) making the accumulated capital oscillate. The nine combinations of (a)--(c) and (i)--(iii) define nine notions of computable randomness. We provide a complete characterization of the relations between these notions, and show that they form five linearly ordered classes. Our results solve outstanding questions raised in Bienvenu et al. (2012), Teutsch (2014), and Chalcraft et al. (2012), and strengthen existing results.