Enhanced Winning in a Competing Population by Random Participation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a randomly participating agent can gain a significant advantage in a minority game, especially in crowded regimes, by selectively recording strategy performance and leveraging the dynamics of history visits.

Contribution

It introduces a model where agents participate randomly and selectively record performance, revealing a persistent winning edge for such agents in crowded regimes.

Findings

Random participation improves agent success in crowded regimes.

Success correlates with the inefficiency measure of strategy performance.

Winning advantage persists for up to 60% of randomly participating agents.

Abstract

We study a version of the minority game in which one agent is allowed to join the game in a random fashion. It is shown that in the crowded regime, i.e., for small values of the memory size $m$ of the agents in the population, the agent performs significantly well if she decides to participate the game randomly with a probability $q$ {\em and} she records the performance of her strategies only in the turns that she participates. The information, characterized by a quantity called the inefficiency, embedded in the agent's strategies performance turns out to be very different from that of the other agents. Detailed numerical studies reveal a relationship between the success rate of the agent and the inefficiency. The relationship can be understood analytically in terms of the dynamics in which the various possible histories are being visited as the game proceeds. For a finite fraction of randomly participating agents up to 60% of the population, it is found that the winning edge of these agents persists.