Kelly Criterion

Biological Parallel

Foraging bees must decide how much energy to allocate to search flights versus colony maintenance. Allocate too much and the colony starves while scouts search empty fields. Too little and valuable nectar sources go unexploited. Optimal foraging theory predicts bees allocate proportional to expected payoff—matching Kelly's formula for optimal bet sizing. Both solve the same problem: maximize long-term growth rate by balancing current consumption against exploration investment.