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We study the repeated optimal stopping problem, in which the same optimal stopping instance with an unknown distribution is solved repeatedly over $T$ rounds. We aim to simultaneously achieve strong per-round performance guarantees relative…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Tsubasa Harada , Yasushi Kawase , Hanna Sumita

We design novel mechanisms for welfare-maximization in two-sided markets. That is, there are buyers willing to purchase items and sellers holding items initially, both acting rationally and strategically in order to maximize utility. Our…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Alexander Braun , Thomas Kesselheim

This paper studies Makespan Minimization in the secretary model. Formally, jobs, specified by their processing times, are presented in a uniformly random order. An online algorithm has to assign each job permanently and irrevocably to one…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Susanne Albers , Maximilian Janke

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

We consider a stochastic online problem where $n$ applicants arrive over time, one per time step. Upon arrival of each applicant their cost per time step is revealed, and we have to fix the duration of employment, starting immediately. This…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-05-31 Yann Disser , John Fearnley , Martin Gairing , Oliver Göbel , Max Klimm , Daniel Schmand , Alexander Skopalik , Andreas Tönnis

We consider an optimal stopping problem with n correlated offers where the goal is to design a (randomized) stopping strategy that maximizes the expected value of the offer in the sequence at which we stop. Instead of assuming to know the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-08 Pieter Kleer , Daan Noordenbos

In our problem, we are given access to a number of sequences of nonnegative i.i.d. random variables, whose realizations are observed sequentially. All sequences are of the same finite length. The goal is to pick one element from each…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-02-06 Aristomenis Tsopelakos , Olgica Milenkovic

There is a rising interest for studying the online benchmark as an alternative of the classical offline benchmark in online stochastic settings. Ezra, Feldman, Gravin, and Tang (SODA 2023) introduced the notion of order-competitive ratio,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-06-24 Liyan Chen , Nuozhou Sun , Zhihao Gavin Tang

We revisit the knapsack-secretary problem (Babaioff et al.; APPROX 2007), a generalization of the classic secretary problem in which items have different sizes and multiple items may be selected if their total size does not exceed the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-08-11 Andreas Abels , Leon Ladewig , Kevin Schewior , Moritz Stinzendörfer

We present pricing mechanisms for several online resource allocation problems which obtain tight or nearly tight approximations to social welfare. In our settings, buyers arrive online and purchase bundles of items; buyers' values for the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-07-16 Shuchi Chawla , J. Benjamin Miller , Yifeng Teng

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

In the weighted bipartite matching problem, the goal is to find a maximum-weight matching in a bipartite graph with nonnegative edge weights. We consider its online version where the first vertex set is known beforehand, but vertices of the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-03-05 Rebecca Reiffenhäuser

One way to interpret the classical secretary problem (CSP) is to consider it as a special case of the following problem. We observe $n$ independent indicator variables $I_1,I_2,\dotsc,I_n$ sequentially and we try to stop on the last…

Probability · Mathematics 2013-09-13 Rémi Dendievel

Contention resolution schemes have proven to be a useful and unifying abstraction for a variety of constrained optimization problems, in both offline and online arrival models. Much of prior work restricts attention to product distributions…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-04-30 Shaddin Dughmi

Optimal stopping problems give rise to random distributions describing how many applicants the decision-maker will sample or interview before choosing one, a quantity sometimes referred to as the search time or process duration. This…

Applications · Statistics 2019-12-13 Simon Demers

The Matroid Secretary Problem (MSP) is one of the most prominent settings for online resource allocation and optimal stopping. A decision-maker is presented with a ground set of elements $E$ revealed sequentially and in random order. Upon…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Kristóf Bérczi , Vasilis Livanos , José Soto , Victor Verdugo

A canonical setting for non-monetary online resource allocation is one where agents compete over multiple rounds for a single item per round, with i.i.d. valuations and additive utilities across rounds. With $n$ symmetric agents, a natural…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-01 David X. Lin , Giannis Fikioris , Siddhartha Banerjee , Éva Tardos

We consider an outsourcing problem where a software agent procures multiple services from providers with uncertain reliabilities to complete a computational task before a strict deadline. The service consumer requires a procurement strategy…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Farzaneh Farhadi , Maria Chli , Nicholas R. Jennings

In submodular $k$-secretary problem, the goal is to select $k$ items in a randomly ordered input so as to maximize the expected value of a given monotone submodular function on the set of selected items. In this paper, we introduce a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-09-18 Shipra Agrawal , Mohammad Shadravan , Cliff Stein

The Santa Claus problem is a fundamental problem in fair division: the goal is to partition a set of heterogeneous items among heterogeneous agents so as to maximize the minimum value of items received by any agent. In this paper, we study…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-07 MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , MohammadReza Khani , Debmalya Panigrahi , Max Springer