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We study the matroid secretary problems with submodular valuation functions. In these problems, the elements arrive in random order. When one element arrives, we have to make an immediate and irrevocable decision on whether to accept it or…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-02-27 Tengyu Ma , Bo Tang , Yajun Wang

We introduce the notion of an online matroid embedding, which is an algorithm for mapping an unknown matroid that is revealed in an online fashion to a larger-but-known matroid. We establish the existence of such an embedding for binary…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-10-20 Andrés Cristi , Paul Dütting , Robert Kleinberg , Renato Paes Leme , Neel Patel

In classical secretary problems, a sequence of $n$ elements arrive in a uniformly random order, and we want to choose a single item, or a set of size $K$. The random order model allows us to escape from the strong lower bounds for the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-12-02 Domagoj Bradac , Anupam Gupta , Sahil Singla , Goran Zuzic

For many online problems, it is known that the uniform arrival order enables the design of algorithms with much better performance guarantees than under worst-case. The quintessential example is the secretary problem. If the sequence of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-02-10 Thomas Kesselheim , Robert Kleinberg , Rad Niazadeh

The Secretary problem is a classical sequential decision-making question that can be succinctly described as follows: a set of rank-ordered applicants are interviewed sequentially for a single position. Once an applicant is interviewed, an…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-03-07 Xujun Liu , Olgica Milenkovic , George V. Moustakides

We extend the standard online worst-case model to accommodate past experience which is available to the online player in many practical scenarios. We do this by revealing a random sample of the adversarial input to the online player ahead…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-07-12 Haim Kaplan , David Naori , Danny Raz

The secretary problem is one of the fundamental problems in online decision making; a tight competitive ratio for this problem of $1/\mathrm{e} \approx 0.368$ has been known since the 1960s. Much more recently, the study of algorithms with…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-10-01 Alexander Braun , Sherry Sarkar

In the matroid secretary problem, elements $N := [n]$ of a matroid $\mathcal{M} \subseteq 2^N$ arrive in random order. When an element arrives, its weight is revealed and a choice must be made to accept or reject the element, subject to the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Rishi Gujjar , Kevin Hua , Robert Kleinberg , Frederick V. Qiu

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

The secretary and the prophet inequality problems are central to the field of Stopping Theory. Recently, there has been a lot of work in generalizing these models to multiple items because of their applications in mechanism design. The most…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-03-20 Soheil Ehsani , MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Thomas Kesselheim , Sahil Singla

In learning-augmented online algorithms, predictions are usually valued for what they say: a value estimate, a solution, or an algorithmic recommendation. This paper shows that predictions can also be valuable solely due to their arrival…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Franziska Eberle , Alexander Lindermayr

We study online combinatorial allocation problems in the secretary setting, under interdependent values. In the interdependent model, introduced by Milgrom and Weber (1982), each agent possesses a private signal that captures her…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-08-01 Michal Feldman , Simon Mauras , Divyarthi Mohan , Rebecca Reiffenhäuser

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

We examine several online matching problems, with applications to Internet advertising reservation systems. Consider an edge-weighted bipartite graph G, with partite sets L, R. We develop an 8-competitive algorithm for the following…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2008-07-09 Nitish Korula , Martin Pal

Constrained submodular maximization problems have long been studied, with near-optimal results known under a variety of constraints when the submodular function is monotone. The case of non-monotone submodular maximization is less…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2010-10-07 Anupam Gupta , Aaron Roth , Grant Schoenebeck , Kunal Talwar

We consider online resource allocation problems where given a set of requests our goal is to select a subset that maximizes a value minus cost type of objective function. Requests are presented online in random order, and each request…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2011-12-07 Siddharth Barman , Seeun Umboh , Shuchi Chawla , David Malec

Only recently progress has been made in obtaining $o(\log(\mathrm{rank}))$-competitive algorithms for the matroid secretary problem. More precisely, Chakraborty and Lachish (2012) presented a $O(\sqrt{\log(\mathrm{rank})})$-competitive…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-07-07 Moran Feldman , Ola Svensson , Rico Zenklusen

An archetypal problem discussed in computer science is the problem of searching for a given number in a given set of numbers. Other than sequential search, the classic solution is to sort the list of numbers and then apply binary search.…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2015-03-20 Philon Nguyen

Whereas there are simple algorithms that are proven to be optimal for the Classical and the Multiple Choice Secretary Problem, the Matroid Secretary Problem is less thoroughly understood. This paper proposes the generalization of some…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-11-08 Simon Park

During the last decade, the matroid secretary problem (MSP) became one of the most prominent classes of online selection problems. Partially linked to its numerous applications in mechanism design, substantial interest arose also in the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-07-31 Moran Feldman , Rico Zenklusen