Abstract
The recently noticed ability of restart to reduce the expected completion time of first-passage processes allows appealing opportunities for performance improvement in a variety of settings. However, complex stochastic processes often exhibit several possible scenarios of completion which are not equally desirable in terms of efficiency. Here we show that restart may have profound consequences on the splitting probabilities of a Bernoulli-like first-passage process, i.e., of a process which can end with one of two outcomes. Particularly intriguing, in this respect, is the class of problems where a carefully adjusted restart mechanism maximizes the probability that the process will complete in a desired way. We reveal the universal aspects of this kind of optimal behavior by applying the general approach recently proposed for the problem of first-passage under restart.
- Received 13 August 2017
- Revised 15 January 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.080601
© 2018 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Synopsis
The Benefits of Starting Anew
Published 21 February 2018
Starting over can increase the chances of reaching a desired outcome among many possibilities, as demonstrated by a new statistical analysis.
See more in Physics