Related papers: Beating 1-1/e for Ordered Prophets
An algorithm for unification modulo one-sided distributivity is an early result by Tid\'en and Arnborg. More recently this theory has been of interest in cryptographic protocol analysis due to the fact that many cryptographic operators…
We study the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a matroid constraint, and present for it a deterministic non-oblivious local search algorithm that has an approximation guarantee of $1 - 1/e - \varepsilon$ (for…
Estimating the density of a distribution from its samples is a fundamental problem in statistics. Hypothesis selection addresses the setting where, in addition to a sample set, we are given $n$ candidate distributions -- referred to as…
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…
This work introduces \emph{sharding} and \emph{Poissonization} as a unified framework for analyzing prophet inequalities. Sharding involves splitting a random variable into several independent random variables, shards, that collectively…
We study the problem of distinguishing between two symmetric probability distributions over $n$ bits by observing $k$ bits of a sample, subject to the constraint that all $k-1$-wise marginal distributions of the two distributions are…
We consider the problem of maximizing the spread of influence in a social network by choosing a fixed number of initial seeds, formally referred to as the influence maximization problem. It admits a $(1-1/e)$-factor approximation algorithm…
This paper introduces the \emph{$d$-distance matching problem}, in which we are given a bipartite graph $G=(S,T;E)$ with $S=\{s_1,\dots,s_n\}$, a weight function on the edges and an integer $d\in\mathbb Z_+$. The goal is to find a maximum…
We present an optimal, combinatorial 1-1/e approximation algorithm for monotone submodular optimization over a matroid constraint. Compared to the continuous greedy algorithm (Calinescu, Chekuri, Pal and Vondrak, 2008), our algorithm is…
In this paper we introduce randomized branching as a tool for parameterized approximation and develop the mathematical machinery for its analysis. Our algorithms improve the best known running times of parameterized approximation algorithms…
In the stochastic matching problem, we are given a general (not necessarily bipartite) graph $G(V,E)$, where each edge in $E$ is realized with some constant probability $p > 0$ and the goal is to compute a bounded-degree (bounded by a…
In the hypothesis selection problem, we are given sample and query access to finite set of candidate distributions (hypotheses), $\mathcal{H} = \{H_1, \ldots, H_n\}$, and samples from an unknown distribution $P$, both over a domain…
Chance-constrained problems involve stochastic components in the constraints which can be violated with a small probability. We investigate the impact of different types of chance constraints on the performance of iterative search…
We study the oblivious matching problem, which aims at finding a maximum matching on a graph with unknown edge set. Any algorithm for the problem specifies an ordering of the vertex pairs. The matching is then produced by probing the pairs…
We study sequential prediction of real-valued, arbitrary and unknown sequences under the squared error loss as well as the best parametric predictor out of a large, continuous class of predictors. Inspired by recent results from…
Stochastic iterative algorithms, including stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD), are widely utilized for optimization and sampling in large-scale and high-dimensional problems in machine…
We consider the algorithmic question of choosing a subset of candidates of a given size $k$ from a set of $m$ candidates, with knowledge of voters' ordinal rankings over all candidates. We consider the well-known and classic scoring rule…
In the classical online model, the maximum independent set problem admits an $\Omega(n)$ lower bound on the competitive ratio even for interval graphs, motivating the study of the problem under additional assumptions. We first study the…
This paper introduces a new technique for quantifying the approximation error of a broad class of probabilistic inference programs, including ones based on both variational and Monte Carlo approaches. The key idea is to derive a subjective…
We present a series of results regarding conceptually simple algorithms for bipartite matching in various online and related models. We first consider a deterministic adversarial model. The best approximation ratio possible for a one-pass…