
## 3.3 Analysis

First of all, it is evident that in some scenarios ii-consultants have a higher profit than wiconsultants. We can conclude that under certain circumstances it is more profitable for a consultant to follow the ii-strategy than being well-informed. Some more detailed observations about the results are described in the following.

## 3.3.1 Using R1

One can see that if reputation is used as the only criterion for selection (α = 0), wi-consultants are always better off. As the price of the consultants gets more important, the profit of ii-consultants generally increases, whereas the profit of wi-consultants decreases. In most settings the wi-consultants' profit decreases so much that at some point it falls below the profit of the ii-consultants. Besides, ii-consultants seem to generally benefit from a low profit margin (δ).

An increasing fraction of ii-consultants causes the curves of both ii-consultants and wiconsultants to have a lower slope value (have a look at the values on the y-axis to verify that).

As a result, the point where the two curves intersect moves to the left, i.e. the ii-strategy becomes more effective.

A varying ∆Narg impacts also the slope of the curves, as well as their distance. Consider for instance the variation of ∆Narg for otherwise fixed parameters: R1, fii = 0.5 and δ = 0.5
(figures on the right side). For ∆Narg = 2, the ii-strategy is the better strategy for α ≥ 0.45; for a ∆Narg of 3 or 4, the wi-strategy is always better - for 3 very distinct, and less distinct for 4.

## 3.3.2 Using R2

The same observations as for R1 can also be made for R2. The main difference lies in the shape of the curves. In particular, the shape of the lines depends on the parity of ∆Narg.

This can be explained as follows. If an even number of new arguments gets available each round, wi-consultants will always advice even arguments; however, if *DeltaN*arg is odd, they switch each round between advising even and odd arguments. Since clients retrospectively judge consultants in R2, they will find in the odd case that wi-consultants contradict each other over time, which will never be the case in the even case. So, in the even case, clients will decrease the reputation of a wi-consultant only if their most recent consultant was ill-informed and consulted an odd argument. This explains also why the profit of wi-consultants is much higher and the profit of ii-consultants is much lower in the even cases (also in comparison to R1).

Apart from these specific shapes, in the same way as for R1 we can observe that the ii-strategy yields in many settings higher profits.

## 4 Conclusion & Future Work

Our simulations suggest that at least four factors have an impact on the profitability of being ill-informed:
- the clients' balancing act of choosing a consultant according to his reputation or his price (α),