Related papers: A sharp bound for winning within a proportion of t…
We prove that the family of largest cuts in the binomial random graph exhibits the following stability property: If $1/n \ll p = 1-\Omega(1)$, then, with high probability, there is a set of $n - o(n)$ vertices that is partitioned in the…
Many online problems are studied in stochastic settings for which inputs are samples from a known distribution, given in advance, or from an unknown distribution. Such distributions model both beyond-worst-case inputs and, when given,…
The problem of determining the joint probability distributions for correlated random variables with pre-specified marginals is considered. When the joint distribution satisfying all the required conditions is not unique, the "most unbiased"…
We study the almost-sure termination problem for probabilistic programs. First, we show that supermartingales with lower bounds on conditional absolute difference provide a sound approach for the almost-sure termination problem. Moreover,…
We use the exact finite sample likelihood and statistical decision theory to answer questions of ``why?'' and ``what should you have done?'' using data from randomized experiments and a utility function that prioritizes safety over…
On a filtered probability space $(\Omega,\mathcal{F},P,\mathbb{F}=(\mathcal{F}_t)_{t=0,\dotso,T})$, we consider stopper-stopper games $\overline V:=\inf_{\Rho\in\bT^{ii}}\sup_{\tau\in\T}\E[U(\Rho(\tau),\tau)]$ and $\underline…
We present an approximate calculation for the distribution of the maximum of a smooth stationary temporal signal X(t). As an application, we compute the persistence exponent associated to the probability that the process remains below a…
A random sequence having two segments being the homogeneous Markov processes is registered. Each segment has his own transition probability law and the length of the segment is unknown and random. The transition probabilities of each…
We study a control problem where the state equation is a nonlinear partial differential equation of the calculus of variation in a bounded domain, perturbed by noise. We allow the control to act on the boundary and set stochastic boundary…
An aperiodic and irreducible Markov chain on a finite state space converges to its stationary distribution. When convergence to equilibrium is measured by total variation distance, there exists an optimal coupling and a maximal coupling…
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…
In the best choice problem with random arrivals, an unknown number $n$ of rankable items arrive at times sampled from the uniform distribution. As is well known, a real-time player can ensure stopping at the overall best item with…
A central computational problem for analyzing and model checking various classes of infinite-state recursive probabilistic systems (including quasi-birth-death processes, multi-type branching processes, stochastic context-free grammars,…
Let $\{X_{k,i};i\geq 1,k\geq 1\}$ be an array of i.i.d. random variables and let $\{p_n;n\geq 1\}$ be a sequence of positive integers such that $n/p_n$ is bounded away from 0 and $\infty$. For $W_n=\max_{1\leq i<j\leq…
We develop novel empirical Bernstein inequalities for the variance of bounded random variables. Our inequalities hold under constant conditional variance and mean, without further assumptions like independence or identical distribution of…
Suppose $k$ balls are dropped into $n$ boxes independently with uniform probability, where $n, k$ are large with ratio approximately equal to some positive real $\lambda$. The maximum box count has a counterintuitive behavior: first of all,…
We prove a large deviation principle for the sum of n independent heavy-tailed random variables, which are subject to a moving cut-off boundary at location n. Conditional on the sum being large at scale n, we show that a finite number of…
Learning the minimum/maximum mean among a finite set of distributions is a fundamental sub-task in planning, game tree search and reinforcement learning. We formalize this learning task as the problem of sequentially testing how the minimum…
First, we give a closed-form formula for first passage time of a reflected Brownian motion with drift. This modifies a formula by Perry et al (2004). Second, we show that the maximum before a fixed drawdown is exponentially distributed for…
The Chow-Robbins game is a classical still partly unsolved stopping problem introduced by Chow and Robbins in 1965. You repeatedly toss a fair coin. After each toss, you decide if you take the fraction of heads up to now as a payoff,…