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In this paper we consider the so-called Multi-returning secretary problem, a version of the Secretary problem in which each candidate has $m$ identical copies. The case $m=2$ has already been completely solved by several authors using…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-10-16 L. Bayon , P. Fortuny , J. M. Grau , A. Oller Marcen , M. M. Ruiz

A version of the classical secretary problem is studied, in which one is interested in selecting one of the b best out of a group of n differently ranked persons who are presented one by one in a random order. It is assumed that b is a…

Probability · Mathematics 2010-09-06 Chris Dietz , Dinard van der Laan , Ad Ridder

We study a variant of the secretary problem where candidates come from independent, not necessarily identical distributions known to us, and show that we can do at least as well as in the IID setting. This resolves a conjecture of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-07-13 Pranav Nuti

We define and study a new variant of the secretary problem. Whereas in the classic setting multiple secretaries compete for a single position, we study the case where the secretaries arrive one at a time and are assigned, in an on-line…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-05-05 Yakov Babichenko , Yuval Emek , Michal Feldman , Boaz Patt-Shamir , Ron Peretz , Rann Smorodinsky

Consider a hiring process with candidates coming from different universities. It is easy to order candidates with the same background, yet it can be challenging to compare them otherwise. The latter case requires additional costly…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Ziyad Benomar , Evgenii Chzhen , Nicolas Schreuder , Vianney Perchet

In the Secretary Problem, one has to hire the best among n candidates. The candidates are interviewed, one at a time, at a random order, and one has to decide on the spot, whether to hire a candidate or continue interviewing. It is well…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-07-23 Moran Feldman , Rani Izsak

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 study a variation of the game of best choice (also known as the secretary problem or game of googol) under an additional assumption that the ranks of interview candidates are restricted using permutation pattern-avoidance. We develop…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-12-04 Brant Jones

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

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

In the "secretary problem", well-known in the theory of optimal stopping, an employer is about to interview a maximum of N secretaries about which she has no prior information. Chow et al. proved that with an optimal strategy the expected…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Kimmo Eriksson , Jonas Sjostrand , Pontus Strimling

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

We study variants of the secretary problem, where $N$, the number of candidates, is a random variable, and the decision maker wants to maximize the probability of success -- picking the largest number among the $N$ candidates -- using only…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-10-13 Junhui Zhang , Patrick Jaillet

We treat a version of the multiple-choice secretary problem called the multiple-choice duration problem, in which the objective is to maximize the time of possession of relatively best objects. It is shown that, for the $m$--choice duration…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-11-23 Charles E. M. Pearce , Krzysztof Szajowski , Mitsushi Tamaki

We consider generalizations of the classical secretary problem, also known as the problem of optimal choice, to posets where the only information we have is the size of the poset and the number of maximal elements. We show that, given this…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-06-29 Bryn Garrod , Robert Morris

In this paper, we present a novel method for computing the asymptotic values of both the optimal threshold, and the probability of success in sequences of optimal stopping problems. This method, based on the resolution of a first-order…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-05-18 L. Bayón , P. Fortuny , J. M. Grau , A. M. Oller-Marcén , M. M. Ruiz

We present a number of positive and negative results for variants of the matroid secretary problem. Most notably, we design a constant-factor competitive algorithm for the "random assignment" model where the weights are assigned randomly to…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2011-12-13 Shayan Oveis Gharan , Jan Vondrák

We study the secretary problem in which rank-ordered lists are generated by the Mallows model and the goal is to identify the highest-ranked candidate through a sequential interview process which does not allow rejected candidates to be…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-03-03 Xujun Liu , Olgica Milenkovic , George V. Moustakides

The game of best choice (also known as the secretary problem) is a model for sequential decision making with a long history and many variations. The classical setup assumes that the sequence of candidate rankings are uniformly distributed.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-11-06 Brant Jones

There are two major models of value uncertainty in the optimal stopping literature: the secretary model, which assumes no prior knowledge, and the prophet inequality model, which assumes full information about value distributions. In…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Tian Bai , Zhiyi Huang , Chui Shan Lee , Dongchen Li