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In the online hitting set problem, sets arrive over time, and the algorithm has to maintain a subset of elements that hit all the sets seen so far. Alon, Awerbuch, Azar, Buchbinder, and Naor (SICOMP 2009) gave an algorithm with competitive…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Sujoy Bhore , Anupam Gupta , Amit Kumar

This paper explores a theory of generalization for learning problems on product distributions, complementing the existing learning theories in the sense that it does not rely on any complexity measures of the hypothesis classes. The main…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-07-28 Chenghao Guo , Zhiyi Huang , Zhihao Gavin Tang , Xinzhi Zhang

A decisionmaker faces $n$ alternatives, each of which represents a potential reward. After investing costly resources into investigating the alternatives, the decisionmaker may select one, or more generally a feasible subset, and obtain the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Robin Bowers , Elias Lindgren , Bo Waggoner

Most of the literature on online algorithms in revenue management focuses on settings with irrevocable decisions, where once a decision is made upon the arrival of a new input, it cannot be canceled later. Motivated by modern applications…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Farbod Ekbatani , Rad Niazadeh , Pranav Nuti , Jan Vondrak

We prove that \Omega(n log(n)) comparisons are necessary for any quantum algorithm that sorts n numbers with high success probability and uses only comparisons. If no error is allowed, at least 0.110nlog_2(n) - 0.067n + O(1) comparisons…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Yaoyun Shi

We study the i.i.d. $k$-selection prophet inequality problem, where a decision-maker sequentially observes $n$ independent nonnegative rewards and may accept at most $k$ of them without knowledge of future realizations. The objective is to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-24 Jieming Kong , Karthyek Murthy

The prophet inequality is one of the cornerstone problems in optimal stopping theory and has become a crucial tool for designing sequential algorithms in Bayesian settings. In the i.i.d. $k$-selection prophet inequality problem, we…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-04-21 Johannes Brustle , Sebastian Perez-Salazar , Victor Verdugo

Candidates arrive sequentially for an interview process which results in them being ranked relative to their predecessors. Based on the ranks available at each time, one must develop a decision mechanism that selects or dismisses the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-05-08 George V. Moustakides , Xujun Liu , Olgica Milenkovic

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

We prove new bounds on the quantum communication complexity of the disjointness and equality problems. For the case of exact and non-deterministic protocols we show that these complexities are all equal to n+1, the previous best lower bound…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-01-03 Peter Hoyer , Ronald de Wolf

We consider the sum of squared logarithms inequality and investigate possible connections with the theory of majorization. We also discuss alternative sufficient conditions on two sets of vectors $a,b\in\mathbb{R}_+^n$ so that…

Classical Analysis and ODEs · Mathematics 2015-07-31 Fozi M. Dannan , Patrizio Neff , Christian Thiel

Several algorithms with an approximation guarantee of $O(\log n)$ are known for the Set Cover problem, where $n$ is the number of elements. We study a generalization of the Set Cover problem, called the Partition Set Cover problem. Here,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-12-04 Tanmay Inamdar , Kasturi Varadarajan

Many quantum algorithms for attacking symmetric cryptography involve the rank problem of quantum linear equations. In this paper, we first propose two quantum algorithms for solving quantum linear systems of equations with coherent…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-05-14 Qiqing Xia , Qianru Zhu , Huiqin Xie , Li Yang

We devise a general graph-theoretic framework for studying prophet inequalities. In this framework, an agent traverses a directed acyclic graph from a starting node $s$ to a target node $t$. Each edge has a value that is sampled from a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-21 Andrés Cristi , Sigal Oren

Generalized sorting problem, also known as sorting with forbidden comparisons, was first introduced by Huang et al. together with a randomized algorithm which requires $\tilde O(n^{3/2})$ probes. We study this problem with additional…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-11-03 Pinyan Lu , Xuandi Ren , Enze Sun , Yubo Zhang

We present the first in-place algorithm for sorting an array of size n that performs, in the worst case, at most O(n log n) element comparisons and O(n) element transports. This solves a long-standing open problem, stated explicitly, e.g.,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Gianni Franceschini , Viliam Geffert

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

Despite having the same basic prophet inequality setup and model of loss aversion, conclusions in our multi-dimensional model differs considerably from the one-dimensional model of Kleinberg et al. For example, Kleinberg et al. gives a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-09-28 Linda Cai , Joshua Gardner , S. Matthew Weinberg

Prophet inequalities are performance guarantees for online algorithms (a.k.a. stopping rules) solving the following "hiring problem": a decision maker sequentially inspects candidates whose values are independent random numbers and is asked…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-05-23 Makis Arsenis , Robert Kleinberg

Given integers $1\leq k<n$, the Gusein-Zade version of a generalized secretary problem is to choose one of the $k$ best of $n$ candidates for a secretary, which are interviewing in random order. The stopping rule in the selection is based…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-10-19 Adam Woryna