{"paper":{"title":"Service Preservation from Matching Non-Matching Socks Under Stochastic Loss","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.IR","authors_text":"Teddy Lazebnik","submitted_at":"2026-02-20T14:00:20Z","abstract_excerpt":"Socks are produced and replaced at a massive scale, yet their paired use makes them unusually vulnerable to service loss, as the disappearance of a single sock can leave usable wear-capacity stranded and create sockless days even when functional socks remain available. In this study, we examine whether pairing non-matching \\say{orphan} socks can preserve daily sock service under stochastic loss, and how this benefit trades off against perceived social discomfort. We formalize sock ownership as a sequential decision problem under uncertainty in which socks wear out and disappear stochastically "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2602.18221","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2602.18221/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}