Related papers: A Generalized Coupon Collector Problem
We study the revenue maximization problem of a seller with n heterogeneous items for sale to a single buyer whose valuation function for sets of items is unknown and drawn from some distribution D. We show that if D is a distribution over…
Given a set (or multiset) S of n numbers and a target number t, the subset sum problem is to decide if there is a subset of S that sums up to t. There are several methods for solving this problem, including exhaustive search,…
We consider the problem of evaluating the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the sum of order statistics, which serves to compute outage probability (OP) values at the output of generalized selection combining receivers. Generally,…
Efficiently counting or detecting defective items is a crucial task in various fields ranging from biological testing to quality control to streaming algorithms. The \emph{group testing estimation problem} concerns estimating the number of…
Order picking is the problem of collecting a set of products in a warehouse in a minimum amount of time. It is currently a major bottleneck in supply-chain because of its cost in time and labor force. This article presents two exact and…
Text compression schemes and compact data structures usually combine sophisticated probability models with basic coding methods whose average codeword length closely match the entropy of known distributions. In the frequent case where basic…
Non-adaptive group testing involves grouping arbitrary subsets of $n$ items into different pools. Each pool is then tested and defective items are identified. A fundamental question involves minimizing the number of pools required to…
We investigate in this work the problem of Erasure Combinatorial Batch Codes, in which $n$ files are stored on $m$ servers so that every set of $n-r$ servers allows a client to retrieve at most $k$ distinct files by downloading at most $t$…
We provide a simple new randomized contraction approach to the global minimum cut problem for simple undirected graphs. The contractions exploit 2-out edge sampling from each vertex rather than the standard uniform edge sampling. We…
Consider n items located randomly on a circle of length 1. The locations of the items are assumed to be independent and uniformly distributed on [0,1). A picker starts at point 0 and has to collect all n items by moving along the circle at…
In many real life situations one has $m$ types of random events happening in chronological order within a time interval and one wishes to predict various milestones about these events or their subsets. An example is birdwatching. Suppose we…
We study procurement games where each seller supplies multiple units of his item, with a cost per unit known only to him. The buyer can purchase any number of units from each seller, values different combinations of the items differently,…
How many copies of a quantum process are necessary and sufficient to construct an approximate classical description of it? We extend the result of Surawy-Stepney, Kahn, Kueng, and Guta (2022) to show that…
Consider a transportation problem with sets of sources and sinks. There are profits and prices on the edges. The goal is to maximize the profit while meeting the following constraints; the total flow going out of a source must not exceed…
In this paper we further investigate the well-studied problem of finding a perfect matching in a regular bipartite graph. The first non-trivial algorithm, with running time $O(mn)$, dates back to K\"{o}nig's work in 1916 (here $m=nd$ is the…
In this paper, we consider multistopping problems for finite discrete time sequences $X_1,...,X_n$. $m$-stops are allowed and the aim is to maximize the expected value of the best of these $m$ stops. The random variables are neither assumed…
We consider a model where an agent has a repeated decision to make and wishes to maximize their total payoff. Payoffs are influenced by an action taken by the agent, but also an unknown state of the world that evolves over time. Before…
Exploiting an iterative formula already introduced in a previous manuscript to count the number $O_d$ of finite $O$-sequences of multiplicity $d$, we obtain some new information about $O_d$. Letting $A_d$ be the number of the finite…
We consider the problem of uniform sampling of points on an algebraic variety. Specifically, we develop a randomized algorithm that, given a small set of multivariate polynomials over a sufficiently large finite field, produces a common…
We consider the problem of learning a general graph $G=(V,E)$ using edge-detecting queries, where the number of vertices $|V|=n$ is given to the learner. The information theoretic lower bound gives $m\log n$ for the number of queries, where…