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We consider a double secretary problem which contains $2n$ applicants of $n$ different qualities, two of each quality. As in the classical secretary problem (CSP), the applicants are interviewed sequentially in a random order by a manager…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-11-18 Shoou-Ren Hsiau , Yi-Shen Lin

This article considers a problem arising from a two-player game based on the classical secretary problem. First, Player 1 selects one object from a sequence as in the secretary problem. All of the other objects are then presented to Player…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-09 David Ramsey

We consider generalizations of the classical secretary problem, also known as the problem of optimal choice, to posets where the only information we have is the size of the poset and the number of maximal elements. We show that, given this…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-06-29 Bryn Garrod , Robert Morris

In the secretary problem we are faced with an online sequence of elements with values. Upon seeing an element we have to make an irrevocable take-it-or-leave-it decision. The goal is to maximize the probability of picking the element of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-11-17 José Correa , Andrés Cristi , Laurent Feuilloley , Tim Oosterwijk , Alexandros Tsigonias-Dimitriadis

Motivated by applications where impatience is pervasive and evaluation times are uncertain, we study a selection model where options may expire at an unknown point in time and evaluation times are stochastic. Initially, the decision-maker…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-05 Yihua Xu , Rohan Ghuge , Sebastian Perez-Salazar

In this paper, we discuss a stochastic decision problem of optimally selecting the order in which to try $n$ opportunities that may yield an uncertain reward in the future. The motivation came out from pure curiosity, after an informal…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-09-27 Giuseppe C. Calafiore

We consider a sequence of independent random variables with the known distribution observed sequentially. The observation $n$ is assumed to be a value of one order statistics such as s:n-th, where 1 is less than s is less than n. It the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-17 Zdzisław Porosiński , Marek Skarupski , Krzysztof Szajowski

In the classical secretary problem, one attempts to find the maximum of an unknown and unlearnable distribution through sequential search. In many real-world searches, however, distributions are not entirely unknown and can be learned…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-08-30 Daniel G. Goldstein , R. Preston McAfee , Siddharth Suri , James R. Wright

We study the submodular secretary problem with a cardinality constraint. In this problem, $n$ candidates for secretaries appear sequentially in random order. At the arrival of each candidate, a decision maker must irrevocably decide whether…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-05-14 Kaito Fujii

The game of best choice, also known as the secretary problem, is a model for sequential decision making with many variations in the literature. Notably, the classical setup assumes that the sequence of candidate rankings is uniformly…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-13 Madeline Crews , Brant Jones , Kaitlyn Myers , Laura Taalman , Michael Urbanski , Breeann Wilson

We define a new selection problem, \emph{Selecting with History}, which extends the secretary problem to a setting with historical information. We propose a strategy for this problem and calculate its success probability in the limit of a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-09-27 Tom Hess , Sivan Sabato

We consider two variants of the secretary problem, the\emph{ Best-or-Worst} and the \emph{Postdoc} problems, which are closely related. First, we prove that both variants, in their standard form with binary payoff 1 or 0, share the same…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-06-23 L. Bayon , P. Fortuny Ayuso , J. M. Grau , A. M. Oller-Marcen , M. M. Ruiz

In the online random-arrival model, an algorithm receives a sequence of n requests that arrive in a random order. The algorithm is expected to make an irrevocable decision with regard to each request based only on the observed history. We…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-07-08 Shai Vardi

We present a new variant of the secretary problem. Let $A$ be a totally ordered set of $n$ \emph{applicants}. Given $P\subseteq A$ and $x\in A$, let $rr(P,x)=\vert\{z\in P \mid z\leq x\}\vert\mbox{ }$ be the \emph{relative rank of} $x$…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-07-10 Josef Rukavicka

The well-known secretary problem in sequential analysis and optimal stopping theory asks one to maximize the probability of finding the optimal candidate in a sequentially examined list under the constraint that accept/reject decisions are…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-07-13 Xujun Liu , Olgica Milenkovic

In this paper we consider two variants of the Secretary problem: The Best-or-Worst and the Postdoc problems. We extend previous work by considering that the number of objects is not known and follows either a discrete Uniform distribution…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-11-13 L. Bayon , P. Fortuny , J. M. Grau , M. M Ruiz , M. A. Oller-Marcen

A version of the classical secretary problem is studied, in which one is interested in selecting one of the b best out of a group of n differently ranked persons who are presented one by one in a random order. It is assumed that b is a…

Probability · Mathematics 2010-09-06 Chris Dietz , Dinard van der Laan , Ad Ridder

The game of best choice (also known as the secretary problem) is a model for sequential decision making with a long history and many variations. The classical setup assumes that the sequence of candidate rankings are uniformly distributed.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-11-06 Brant Jones

In this paper we study the classical problem of throughput maximization. In this problem we have a collection $J$ of $n$ jobs, each having a release time $r_j$, deadline $d_j$, and processing time $p_j$. They have to be scheduled…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-02-14 Dylan Hyatt-Denesik , Mirmahdi Rahgoshay , Mohammad R. Salavatipour

Most classical scheduling formulations assume a fixed and known duration for each activity. In this paper, we weaken this assumption, requiring instead that each duration can be represented by an independent random variable with a known…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2011-10-13 J. C. Beck , N. Wilson