2014/03/09 by Vinícius G. Pereira de Sá, Vinícius Gusmão Pereira de Sá, de Sá, Vinícius Gusmão Pereira +3
Computer Science · Mathematics · #60C05 #Benford’s Law and Fraud Detection #Chaos-based Image/Signal Encryption #Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms #Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #cs.DS #msc:60C05
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1403.2092
12 pages, 1 figure
arxiv created 2014/03/09 · openalex publication_date 2014/03/09 · arxiv updated 2014/03/11 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The toss of a coin is usually regarded as the epitome of randomness, and has been used for ages as a means to resolve disputes in a simple, fair way. Perhaps as ancient as consulting objects such as coins and dice is the art of maliciously biasing them in order to unbalance their outcomes. However, it is possible to employ a biased device to produce equiprobable results in a number of ways, the most famous of which is the method suggested by von Neumann back in 1951. This paper addresses how to extract uniformly distributed bits of information from a nonuniform source. We study some probabilities related to biased dice and coins, culminating in an interesting variation of von Neumann's mechanism that can be employed in a more restricted setting where the actual results of the coin tosses are not known to the contestants.