St. Petersburg paradox
E593494
The St. Petersburg paradox is a famous problem in probability theory and economics that highlights how a lottery with an infinite expected payoff can still attract only a finite price from rational gamblers, challenging traditional notions of expected value and decision-making under risk.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| St. Petersburg paradox canonical | 2 |
| finite-horizon St. Petersburg game | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T6455879 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: St. Petersburg paradox Context triple: [Nicolaus Bernoulli, notableWork, St. Petersburg paradox]
-
A.
Ellsberg paradox
The Ellsberg paradox is a famous problem in decision theory and economics that demonstrates how people’s choices often violate expected utility theory due to ambiguity aversion.
-
B.
Allais paradox
The Allais paradox is a famous decision-making puzzle in behavioral economics that shows how people's choices under risk often violate the expected utility theory, revealing systematic inconsistencies in rational choice models.
-
C.
expected utility theory (with John von Neumann)
Expected utility theory (with John von Neumann) is a foundational framework in economics and decision theory that models how rational agents make choices under uncertainty by maximizing the expected value of a utility function.
-
D.
Pascal's wager
Pascal's wager is a philosophical argument by Blaise Pascal that posits it is rational to live as if God exists, because the potential gains of belief outweigh the potential losses.
-
E.
Ellsberg
Ellsberg is a surname most famously associated with Daniel Ellsberg, the American military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: St. Petersburg paradox Target entity description: The St. Petersburg paradox is a famous problem in probability theory and economics that highlights how a lottery with an infinite expected payoff can still attract only a finite price from rational gamblers, challenging traditional notions of expected value and decision-making under risk.
-
A.
Ellsberg paradox
The Ellsberg paradox is a famous problem in decision theory and economics that demonstrates how people’s choices often violate expected utility theory due to ambiguity aversion.
-
B.
Allais paradox
The Allais paradox is a famous decision-making puzzle in behavioral economics that shows how people's choices under risk often violate the expected utility theory, revealing systematic inconsistencies in rational choice models.
-
C.
expected utility theory (with John von Neumann)
Expected utility theory (with John von Neumann) is a foundational framework in economics and decision theory that models how rational agents make choices under uncertainty by maximizing the expected value of a utility function.
-
D.
Pascal's wager
Pascal's wager is a philosophical argument by Blaise Pascal that posits it is rational to live as if God exists, because the potential gains of belief outweigh the potential losses.
-
E.
Ellsberg
Ellsberg is a surname most famously associated with Daniel Ellsberg, the American military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
paradox in decision theory
ⓘ
paradox in economics ⓘ paradox in probability theory ⓘ |
| analyzedBy | Daniel Bernoulli ⓘ |
| challenges |
classical expected value theory
ⓘ
use of expected monetary value as sole decision criterion ⓘ |
| describes | lottery game with potentially infinite payoff ⓘ |
| earlierVersionProposedBy |
Nicolas Bernoulli
ⓘ
linked to:
Nicolaus Bernoulli
|
| field |
decision theory
ⓘ
economics ⓘ game theory ⓘ probability theory ⓘ utility theory ⓘ |
| firstPublicationYear | 1738 ⓘ |
| firstPublishedIn | Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae ⓘ |
| formalizedBy | Daniel Bernoulli ⓘ |
| hasCoreConcept |
decision-making under risk
ⓘ
diminishing marginal utility of wealth ⓘ expected utility ⓘ infinite expected value ⓘ lottery with infinite expectation ⓘ risk aversion ⓘ unbounded utility function ⓘ |
| hasInfluenced | modern theories of risk and utility ⓘ |
| hasSolutionApproach |
bounded utility hypothesis
ⓘ
expected utility with concave utility function ⓘ finite wealth constraints ⓘ probability weighting and behavioral models ⓘ |
| hasVariant |
finite-horizon St. Petersburg game
ⓘ
linked to:
St. Petersburg paradox
modified St. Petersburg game with capped payoffs ⓘ |
| illustrates |
difference between expected value and willingness to pay
ⓘ
importance of utility curvature ⓘ limitations of linear utility in modeling choices ⓘ |
| involves |
coin-toss game
ⓘ
geometrically increasing payoffs ⓘ infinite series of expected payoffs ⓘ |
| motivated |
concept of risk aversion in economics
ⓘ
development of expected utility theory ⓘ introduction of utility functions for wealth ⓘ |
| namedAfter |
Saint Petersburg
ⓘ
linked to:
St. Petersburg
|
| relatedConcept |
expected utility hypothesis
ⓘ
expected value ⓘ lottery (probability theory) ⓘ paradoxes of rational choice ⓘ risk premium ⓘ utility of wealth ⓘ |
| usedIn |
teaching of decision theory
ⓘ
teaching of microeconomics ⓘ teaching of probability theory ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: St. Petersburg paradox Description of subject: The St. Petersburg paradox is a famous problem in probability theory and economics that highlights how a lottery with an infinite expected payoff can still attract only a finite price from rational gamblers, challenging traditional notions of expected value and decision-making under risk.
Referenced by (3)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
linked to: St. Petersburg paradox