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In this paper, we introduce a family of sequential decision-making problems, collectively termed the Keychain Problem, that involve exploring a set of actions to maximize expected payoff when only a subset of actions are available in each…
Causal discovery from observational data is a fundamental task in artificial intelligence, with far-reaching implications for decision-making, predictions, and interventions. Despite significant advances, existing methods can be broadly…
Self-adjusting computation is an approach for automatically producing dynamic algorithms from static ones. The approach works by tracking control and data dependencies, and propagating changes through the dependencies when making an update.…
Lock-free concurrent algorithms guarantee that some concurrent operation will always make progress in a finite number of steps. Yet programmers prefer to treat concurrent code as if it were wait-free, guaranteeing that all operations always…
In two previous experiments we investigated the neural precursors of subjects' "free" choices for one of two options (pressing one of two buttons, and choosing between adding and subtracting numbers). In these experiments the distribution…
Modern software systems are expected to be secure and contain all the latest features, even when new versions of software are released multiple times an hour. Each system may include many interacting packages. The problem of installing…
Probabilistic timed automata are classical timed automata extended with discrete probability distributions over edges. We introduce clock-dependent probabilistic timed automata, a variant of probabilistic timed automata in which transition…
The problem of computing functions of values at the nodes in a network in a totally distributed manner, where nodes do not have unique identities and make decisions based only on local information, has applications in sensor, peer-to-peer,…
Sequential testing problems involve a complex system with several components, each of which is "working" with some independent probability. The outcome of each component can be determined by performing a test, which incurs some cost. The…
For three natural classes of dynamic decision problems; 1. additively separable problems, 2. discounted problems, and 3. discounted problems for a fixed discount factor; we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for one sequential…
Most decisions require information gathering from a stimulus presented with different gaps. Indeed, the brain process of this integration is rarely ambiguous. Recently, it has been claimed that humans can optimally integrate the information…
We consider the task of modeling a dependent sequence of random partitions. It is well-known that a random measure in Bayesian nonparametrics induces a distribution over random partitions. The community has therefore assumed that the best…
We study a fundamental stochastic selection problem involving $n$ independent random variables, each of which can be queried at some cost. Given a tolerance level $\delta$, the goal is to find a value that is $\delta$-approximately minimum…
Distribution shifts have long been regarded as troublesome external forces that a decision-maker should either counteract or conform to. An intriguing feedback phenomenon termed decision dependence arises when the deployed decision affects…
We study the problem of hypothesis testing between two discrete distributions, where we only have access to samples after the action of a known reversible Markov chain, playing the role of noise. We derive instance-dependent minimax rates…
We consider a parallel version of a classical Bayesian search problem. $k$ agents are looking for a treasure that is placed in one of the boxes indexed by $\mathbb{N}^+$ according to a known distribution $p$. The aim is to minimize the…
Research in reinforcement learning has produced algorithms for optimal decision making under uncertainty that fall within two main types. The first employs a Bayesian framework, where optimality improves with increased computational time.…
Stochastic optimization problems often involve data distributions that change in reaction to the decision variables. This is the case for example when members of the population respond to a deployed classifier by manipulating their features…
Identifying dependency in multivariate data is a common inference task that arises in numerous applications. However, existing nonparametric independence tests typically require computation that scales at least quadratically with the sample…
In this paper we show that many sequential randomized incremental algorithms are in fact parallel. We consider algorithms for several problems including Delaunay triangulation, linear programming, closest pair, smallest enclosing disk,…