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Given a set of independent Poisson random variables with common mean, we study the distribution of their maximum and obtain an accurate asymptotic formula to locate the most probable value of the maximum. We verify our analytic results with…
The following optimal stopping problem is considered. The vertices of a graph $G$ are revealed one by one, in a random order, to a selector. He aims to stop this process at a time $t$ that maximizes the expected number of connected…
We consider election scenarios with incomplete information, a situation that arises often in practice. There are several models of incomplete information and accordingly, different notions of outcomes of such elections. In one well-studied…
Suppose a customer is faced with a sequence of fluctuating prices, such as for airfare or a product sold by a large online retailer. Given distributional information about what price they might face each day, how should they choose when to…
The forward prediction problem for a binary time series $\{X_n\}_{n=0}^{\infty}$ is to estimate the probability that $X_{n+1}=1$ based on the observations $X_i$, $0\le i\le n$ without prior knowledge of the distribution of the process…
The classical Erd\H{o}s-Littlewood-Offord problem concerns the random variable $X = a_1 \xi_1 + \dots + a_n \xi_n$, where $a_i \in \mathbb{R} \setminus \{0\}$ are fixed and $\xi_i \sim \text{Ber}(1/2)$ are independent. The…
Given $X \subset R^n$, $\varepsilon \in (0,1)$, a parametrized family of probability distributions $(\mu\_{a})\_{a\in A}$ on $\Omega\subset R^p$, we consider the feasible set $X^*\_\varepsilon\subset X$ associated with the {\em…
We consider a general class of round-robin tournament models of equally strong players. In these models, each of the $n$ players competes against every other player exactly once. For each match between two players, the outcome is a value…
In this paper we study a general optimal liquidation problem with a control-dependent stopping time which is the first time the stock holding becomes zero or a fixed terminal time, whichever comes first. We prove a stochastic maximum…
Let $\mathbf{X}^{(1)}_{n},\ldots,\mathbf{X}^{(m)}_{n}$, where $\mathbf{X}^{(i)}_{n}=(X^{(i)}_{1},\ldots,X^{(i)}_{n})$, $i=1,\ldots,m$, be $m$ independent sequences of independent and identically distributed random variables taking their…
A fundamental tool in network information theory is the covering lemma, which lower bounds the probability that there exists a pair of random variables, among a give number of independently generated candidates, falling within a given set.…
Given a sequence of independent random variables with a common continuous distribution, we consider the online decision problem where one seeks to minimize the expected value of the time that is needed to complete the selection of a…
We study the problem of computing the tightest upper and lower bounds on the probability that the sum of $n$ dependent Bernoulli random variables exceeds an integer $k$. Under knowledge of all pairs of bivariate distributions denoted by a…
A certain spectrum, indexed by a\in[0,\infty], of upper bounds P_a(X;x) on the tail probability P(X\geq x), with P_0(X;x)=P(X\geq x) and P_\infty(X;x) being the best possible exponential upper bound on P(X\geq x), is shown to be stable and…
We study the probability of Boolean functions with small max influence to become constant under random restrictions. Let $f$ be a Boolean function such that the variance of $f$ is $\Omega(1)$ and all its individual influences are bounded by…
We revisit the noisy binary search model of Karp and Kleinberg, in which we have $n$ coins with unknown probabilities $p_i$ that we can flip. The coins are sorted by increasing $p_i$, and we would like to find where the probability crosses…
Consider a degree-$d$ polynomial $f(\xi_1,\dots,\xi_n)$ of independent Rademacher random variables $\xi_1,\dots,\xi_n$. To what extent can $f(\xi_1,\dots,\xi_n)$ concentrate on a single point? This is the so-called polynomial…
We propose upper and lower bounds on the maximum success probability for discriminating given quantum states. The proposed upper bound is obtained from a suboptimal solution to the dual problem of the corresponding optimal state…
Let $M_n^{(k)}$ denote the $k$th largest maximum of a sample $(X_1,X_2,...,X_n)$ from parent $X$ with continuous distribution. Assume there exist normalizing constants $a_n>0$, $b_n\in \mathbb{R}$ and a nondegenerate distribution $G$ such…
We prove upper bounds on the rate, called "mixing rate", at which the von Neumann entropy of the expected density operator of a given ensemble of states changes under non-local unitary evolution. For an ensemble consisting of two states,…