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Statistical analysis of discrimination games

  • Interdisciplinary Physics
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Abstract.

The hypothesis that meanings originate from discrimination tasks, in which an individual attempts to categorize N objects using a set of M sensory channels, is examined within a quantitative statistical perspective. Failure in discrimination triggers the refinement of a randomly-chosen sensory channel, starting thus an ongoing process, termed discrimination game, that ends only when all objects are differentiated. We show that the expected number of trials of a discrimination game diverges in the case of a single channel and scales with the power N2/M for M ≥2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo, 13560-970, São Carlos São Paulo, Brazil

    J. F. Fontanari

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  1. J. F. Fontanari
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Fontanari, J. Statistical analysis of discrimination games. Eur. Phys. J. B 54, 127–130 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00400-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00400-x

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