English

The Secretary Problem with Distributions

Data Structures and Algorithms 2022-07-13 v2 Discrete Mathematics Probability

Abstract

We study a variant of the secretary problem where candidates come from independent, not necessarily identical distributions known to us, and show that we can do at least as well as in the IID setting. This resolves a conjecture of Esfandiari et al.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.02888,
  title  = {The Secretary Problem with Distributions},
  author = {Pranav Nuti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.02888},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

11 pages. New version with more details. Title changed from "On the best-choice prophet secretary problem" to "The Secretary Problem with Distributions." The final authenticated publication is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06901-7_32

R2 v1 2026-06-23T20:44:44.799Z