Related papers: Optimizing stakes in simultaneous bets
Given a set C in R^d, let p(C) be the probability that a random d-dimensional unimodular lattice, chosen according to Haar measure on SL(d,Z)\SL(d,R), is disjoint from C\{0}. For special convex sets C we prove bounds on p(C) which are sharp…
We investigate a class of chance-constrained combinatorial optimization problems. Given a pre-specified risk level $\epsilon \in [0,1]$, the chance-constrained program aims to find the minimum cost selection of a vector of binary decisions…
We study discounted random walks in directed graphs. In each step, the walk either terminates with a constant probability $\alpha$, or proceeds to a random out-neighbor. Our goal is to estimate the probability $\pi(s, t)$ that a discounted…
Two sequential estimators are proposed for the odds p/(1-p) and log odds log(p/(1-p)) respectively, using independent Bernoulli random variables with parameter p as inputs. The estimators are unbiased, and guarantee that the variance of the…
Consider the problem of drawing random variates $(X_1,\ldots,X_n)$ from a distribution where the marginal of each $X_i$ is specified, as well as the correlation between every pair $X_i$ and $X_j$. For given marginals, the…
The construction of confidence intervals for the mean of a bounded random variable is a classical problem in statistics with numerous applications in machine learning and virtually all scientific fields. In particular, obtaining the…
This paper considers a variation of the full-information secretary problem where the random variables to be observed are independent but not necessary identically distributed. The main result is a sharp lower bound for the optimal win…
We study the statistical limits of testing and estimation for a rank one deformation of a Gaussian random tensor. We compute the sharp thresholds for hypothesis testing and estimation by maximum likelihood and show that they are the same.…
This paper considers online convex optimization with time-varying constraint functions. Specifically, we have a sequence of convex objective functions $\{f_t(x)\}_{t=0}^{\infty}$ and convex constraint functions…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, we study the computation of the probability distribution function of both the area and perimeter of the convex hull of a random subset $S$ of $P$. The random subset $S$ is formed by drawing each…
The variation of a martingale $p_0^k=p_0,...,p_k$ of probabilities on a finite (or countable) set $X$ is denoted $V(p_0^k)$ and defined by $V(p_0^k)=E(\sum_{t=1}^k|p_t-p_{t-1}|_1)$. It is shown that $V(p_0^k)\leq \sqrt{2kH(p_0)}$, where…
For the model of constrained multi-armed bandit, we show that by construction there exists an index-based deterministic asymptotically optimal algorithm. The optimality is achieved by the convergence of the probability of choosing an…
We consider a vector of $N$ independent binary variables, each with a different probability of success. The distribution of the vector conditional on its sum is known as the conditional Bernoulli distribution. Assuming that $N$ goes to…
Let i.i.d. symmetric Bernoulli random variables be associated to the edges of a binary tree having n levels. To any leaf of the tree, we associate the sum of variables along the path connecting the leaf with the tree root. Let M_n denote…
The Boltzmann-Gibbs celebrated entropy $S_{BG}=-k\sum_ip_i \ln p_i$ is {\it concave} (with regard to all probability distributions $\{p_i\}$) and {\it stable} (under arbitrarily small deformations of any given probability distribution). It…
Unlike previous studies on mixture distributions, a bagging and boosting based convexly combined mixture probabilistic model has been suggested. This model is a result of iteratively searching for obtaining the optimum probabilistic model…
Two old conjectures from problem sections, one of which from SIAM Review, concern the question of finding distributions that maximize P(Sn <= t), where Sn is the sum of i.i.d. random variables X1, ..., Xn on the interval [0,1], satisfying…
This article proposes a bivariate Simplex distribution for modeling continuous outcomes constrained to the interval $(0,1)$, which can represent proportions, rates, or indices. We derive analytical expressions to calculate the dependence…
In this paper we improve Bernoulli comparison. The result works for independent Rademacher random variables $(\varepsilon_i)_{i\geq1}$ and states that we can compare $\mathbb{E}\sup_{t\in T}\sum_{i\geq1}\varphi_{i}(t)\varepsilon_i$ with…
Let $\mathbb{P}_{\kappa}(n)$ be the probability that $n$ points $z_1,\ldots,z_n$ picked uniformly and independently in $\mathfrak{C}_\kappa$, a regular $\kappa$-gon with area $1$, are in convex position, that is, form the vertex set of a…