Related papers: The Price of Information in Combinatorial Optimiza…
Suppose there are $n$ Markov chains and we need to pay a per-step \emph{price} to advance them. The "destination" states of the Markov chains contain rewards; however, we can only get rewards for a subset of them that satisfy a…
We study problems with stochastic uncertainty information on intervals for which the precise value can be queried by paying a cost. The goal is to devise an adaptive decision tree to find a correct solution to the problem in consideration…
In several applications of automatic diagnosis and active learning a central problem is the evaluation of a discrete function by adaptively querying the values of its variables until the values read uniquely determine the value of the…
Stochastic matching is the stochastic version of the well-known matching problem, which consists in maximizing the rewards of a matching under a set of probability distributions associated with the nodes and edges. In most stochastic…
We study the problem of evaluating a discrete function by adaptively querying the values of its variables until the values read uniquely determine the value of the function. Reading the value of a variable is done at the expense of some…
We study the optimal usage-based pricing problem in a resource-constrained network with one profit-maximizing service provider and multiple groups of surplus-maximizing users. With the assumption that the service provider knows the utility…
We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…
Large graphs abound in machine learning, data mining, and several related areas. A useful step towards analyzing such graphs is that of obtaining certain summary statistics - e.g., or the expected length of a shortest path between two…
Stochastic optimization is one of the central problems in Machine Learning and Theoretical Computer Science. In the standard model, the algorithm is given a fixed distribution known in advance. In practice though, one may acquire at a cost…
This paper addresses combinatorial optimization scheme for solving the multicriteria Steiner tree problem for communication network topology design (e.g., wireless mesh network). The solving scheme is based on several models: multicriteria…
Many smart grid frameworks, such as demand response programs, require accurate information about consumers' parameters (e.g., flexibility) at the aggregator side to optimize grid operations. Existing works typically rely on perfect…
Robust optimization is one of the fundamental approaches to deal with uncertainty in combinatorial optimization. This paper considers the robust spanning tree problem with interval data, which arises in a variety of telecommunication…
In this paper, we study platforms where resources and jobs are spatially distributed, and resources have the flexibility to strategically move to different locations for better payoffs. The price of the service at each location depends on…
We consider cost constrained versions of the minimum spanning tree problem and the assignment problem. We assume edge weights are independent copies of a continuous random variable $Z$ that satisfies $F(x)=\Pr(Z\leq x)\approx x^\alpha$ as…
Searching for optimal ways in a network is an important task in multiple application areas such as social networks, co-citation graphs or road networks. In the majority of applications, each edge in a network is associated with a certain…
All sequential decision-making agents explore so as to acquire knowledge about a particular target. It is often the responsibility of the agent designer to construct this target which, in rich and complex environments, constitutes a onerous…
A group of mobile agents is given a task to explore an edge-weighted graph $G$, i.e., every vertex of $G$ has to be visited by at least one agent. There is no centralized unit to coordinate their actions, but they can freely communicate…
We study the complexity of finding communication trees with the lowest possible completion time for rooted, irregular gather and scatter collective communication operations in fully connected, $k$-ported communication networks under a…
Two general algorithms based on opportunity costs are given for approximating a revenue-maximizing set of bids an auctioneer should accept, in a combinatorial auction in which each bidder offers a price for some subset of the available…
Pandora's problem is a fundamental model in economics that studies optimal search strategies under costly inspection. In this paper we initiate the study of Pandora's problem with combinatorial costs, capturing many real-life scenarios…