Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Optimal Decisions of a Rational Agent in the Presence of Biased
  Information Providers   We consider information networks whereby multiple
biased-information-providers (BIPs), e.g., media outlets/social network
users/sensors, share reports of events with rational-information-consumers
(RICs). Making the reasonable abstraction that an event can be reported as an
answer to a logical statement, we model the input-output behavior of each BIP
as a binary channel. For various reasons, some BIPs might share incorrect
reports of the event. Moreover, each BIP is: 'biased' if it favors one of the
two outcomes while reporting, or 'unbiased' if it favors neither outcome. Such
biases occur in information/social networks due to differences in users'
characteristics/worldviews.
  We study the impact of the BIPs' biases on an RIC's choices while deducing
the true information. Our work reveals that a "graph-blind" RIC looking for $n$
BIPs among its neighbors, acts peculiarly in order to minimize its probability
of making an error while deducing the true information. First, we establish the
counter-intuitive fact that the RIC's expected error is minimized by choosing
BIPs that are fully-biased against the a-priori likely event. Then, we study
the gains that fully-biased BIPs provide over unbiased BIPs when the error
rates of their binary channels are equalized, for fair comparison, at some
$r>0$. Specifically, the unbiased-to-fully-biased ratio of the RIC's expected
error probabilities grows exponentially with the exponent
$\frac{n}{2}\ln\left(4\rho_0^2\left(\frac{1}{r}-1\right)\right)$, where
$\rho_0$ is the event's prior probability of being $0$. This shows not only
that fully-biased BIPs are preferable to unbiased or heterogeneously-biased
BIPs, but also that the gains can be substantial for small $r$.

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The categories of this paper are: cond-mat
31
The categories of this paper are: ao-sci
36
The categories of this paper are: cmp-lg
25
The categories of this paper are: patt-sol
27
The categories of this paper are: comp-gas
22
The categories of this paper are: chao-dyn
37
The categories of this paper are: supr-con
15
The categories of this paper are: nucl-ex
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The categories of this paper are: hep-ex
11
The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
0
The categories of this paper are: hep-ph
10
The categories of this paper are: q-bio
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The categories of this paper are: hep-th
32
The categories of this paper are: atom-ph
35
The categories of this paper are: mtrl-th
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The categories of this paper are: nlin