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The Matroid Secretary Problem is a central question in online optimization, modeling sequential decision-making under combinatorial constraints. We introduce a bipartite graph framework that unifies and extends several known formulations,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-11-07 Kristóf Bérczi , Vasilis Livanos , José A. Soto , Victor Verdugo

The study of the prophet inequality problem in the limited information regime was initiated by Azar et al. [SODA'14] in the pursuit of prior-independent posted-price mechanisms. As they show, $O(1)$-competitive policies are achievable using…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-11-24 Constantine Caramanis , Matthew Faw , Orestis Papadigenopoulos , Emmanouil Pountourakis

We study a variant of the single-choice prophet inequality problem where the decision-maker does not know the underlying distribution and has only access to a set of samples from the distributions. Rubinstein et al. [2020] showed that the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-04 Tomer Ezra

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-10-10 Hossein Esfandiari , MohammadTaghi HajiAghayi , Brendan Lucier , Michael Mitzenmacher

Prophet inequalities are a central object of study in optimal stopping theory. A gambler is sent values in an online fashion, sampled from an instance of independent distributions, in an adversarial, random or selected order, depending on…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Giordano Giambartolomei , Frederik Mallmann-Trenn , Raimundo Saona

In learning-augmented online algorithms, predictions are usually valued for what they say: a value estimate, a solution, or an algorithmic recommendation. This paper shows that predictions can also be valuable solely due to their arrival…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Franziska Eberle , Alexander Lindermayr

A central object in optimal stopping theory is the single-choice prophet inequality for independent, identically distributed random variables: Given a sequence of random variables $X_1,\dots,X_n$ drawn independently from a distribution $F$,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-04-08 José R. Correa , Paul Dütting , Felix Fischer , Kevin Schewior

A decisionmaker faces $n$ alternatives, each of which represents a potential reward. After investing costly resources into investigating the alternatives, the decisionmaker may select one, or more generally a feasible subset, and obtain the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Robin Bowers , Elias Lindgren , Bo Waggoner

We study the prophet inequality when the gambler has an access only to a single sample from each distribution. Rubinstein, Wang and Weinberg showed that an optimal guarantee of 1/2 can be achieved when the underlying matroid has rank 1,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-03 Kanstantsin Pashkovich , Alice Sayutina

One of the classic problems in online decision-making is the *secretary problem* where to goal is to maximize the probability of choosing the largest number from a randomly ordered sequence. A natural extension allows selecting multiple…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-01-16 Kiarash Banihashem , MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Dariusz R. Kowalski , Piotr Krysta , Danny Mittal , Jan Olkowski

In the matroid secretary problem, elements $N := [n]$ of a matroid $\mathcal{M} \subseteq 2^N$ arrive in random order. When an element arrives, its weight is revealed and a choice must be made to accept or reject the element, subject to the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Rishi Gujjar , Kevin Hua , Robert Kleinberg , Frederick V. Qiu

The secretary problem became one of the most prominent online selection problems due to its numerous applications in online mechanism design. The task is to select a maximum weight subset of elements subject to given constraints, where…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-04-11 Moran Feldman , Ola Svensson , Rico Zenklusen

In the classical prophet inequality, a gambler observes a sequence of stochastic rewards $V_1,...,V_n$ and must decide, for each reward $V_i$, whether to keep it and stop the game or to forfeit the reward forever and reveal the next value…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-07-16 Pablo D. Azar , Robert Kleinberg , S. Matthew Weinberg

Prophet inequalities are fundamental optimal stopping problems, where a decision-maker observes sequentially items with values sampled independently from known distributions, and must decide at each new observation to either stop and gain…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Ziyad Benomar , Dorian Baudry , Vianney Perchet

We study the submodular secretary problem with a cardinality constraint. In this problem, $n$ candidates for secretaries appear sequentially in random order. At the arrival of each candidate, a decision maker must irrevocably decide whether…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-05-14 Kaito Fujii

In a matroid secretary problem, one is presented with a sequence of objects of various weights in a random order, and must choose irrevocably to accept or reject each item. There is a further constraint that the set of items selected must…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-01-22 David Harris , Manish Purohit

We revisit three fundamental problems in algorithms under uncertainty: the Secretary Problem, Prophet Inequality, and Stochastic Probing, each subject to general downward-closed constraints. When elements have binary values, all three…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Aviad Rubinstein , Sahil Singla

We design novel mechanisms for welfare-maximization in two-sided markets. That is, there are buyers willing to purchase items and sellers holding items initially, both acting rationally and strategically in order to maximize utility. Our…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Alexander Braun , Thomas Kesselheim

Consider a gambler and a prophet who observe a sequence of independent, non-negative numbers. The gambler sees the numbers one-by-one whereas the prophet sees the entire sequence at once. The goal of both is to decide on fractions of each…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-07-22 Paul Duetting , Robert Kleinberg

We solve the secretary problem in the case that the ranked items arrive in a statistically biased order rather than in uniformly random order. The bias is given by a Mallows distribution with parameter $q\in(0,1)$, so that higher ranked…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-12-02 Ross G. Pinsky