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Related papers: Constrained-Order Prophet Inequalities

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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 the prophet inequality problem, a gambler faces a sequence of items arriving online with values drawn independently from known distributions. On seeing an item, the gambler must choose whether to accept its value as her reward and quit…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Archit Bubna , Ashish Chiplunkar

In a prophet inequality problem, $n$ independent random variables are presented to a gambler one by one. The gambler decides when to stop the sequence and obtains the most recent value as reward. We evaluate a stopping rule by the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-11-16 Andrés Cristi , Bruno Ziliotto

Consider a gambler who observes a sequence of independent, non-negative random numbers and is allowed to stop the sequence at any time, claiming a reward equal to the most recent observation. The famous prophet inequality of Krengel,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2012-01-24 Robert Kleinberg , S. Matthew Weinberg

The setting of the classic prophet inequality is as follows: a gambler is shown the probability distributions of $n$ independent, non-negative random variables with finite expectations. In their indexed order, a value is drawn from each…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-12-31 Jack Wang

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

The classical Prophet Inequality arises from a fundamental problem in optimal-stopping theory. In this problem, a gambler sees a finite sequence of independent, non-negative random variables. If he stops the sequence at any time, he…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-01-10 Van-Anh Truong , Xinshang Wang

In the classic prophet inequality, samples from independent random variables arrive online. A gambler that knows the distributions must decide at each point in time whether to stop and pick the current sample or to continue and lose that…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-03-13 Jose Correa , Raimundo Saona , Bruno Ziliotto

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

In the classical prophet inequality, a gambler faces a sequence of items, whose values are drawn independently from known distributions. Upon the arrival of each item, its value is realized and the gambler either accepts it and the game…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-04-05 Bo Peng , Zhihao Gavin Tang

In the classical prophet inequality settings, a gambler is given a sequence of $n$ random variables $X_1, \dots, X_n$, taken from known distributions, observes their values in this (potentially adversarial) order, and select one of them,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-04-19 Sariel Har-Peled , Elfarouk Harb , Vasilis Livanos

Prophet inequalities are a central object of study in optimal stopping theory. In the iid model, a gambler sees values in an online fashion, sampled independently from a given distribution. Upon observing each value, the gambler either…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Giordano Giambartolomei , Frederik Mallmann-Trenn , Raimundo Saona

In this paper, we introduce an over-time variant of the well-known prophet inequality with i.i.d. random variables. Instead of stopping with one realized value at some point in the process, we decide for each step how long we select the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Andreas Abels , Elias Pitschmann , Daniel Schmand

A prophet inequality states, for some $\alpha\in[0,1]$, that the expected value achievable by a gambler who sequentially observes random variables $X_1,\dots,X_n$ and selects one of them is at least an $\alpha$ fraction of the maximum value…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-11-24 José Correa , Paul Dütting , Felix Fischer , Kevin Schewior , Bruno Ziliotto

In this work, we study the single-choice prophet inequality problem, where a gambler faces a sequence of~$n$ online i.i.d. random variables drawn from an unknown distribution. When a variable reveals its value, the gambler needs to decide…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-08-23 Bo Li , Xiaowei Wu , Yutong Wu

We introduce a variant of the classic prophet inequality, called \emph{residual prophet inequality} (RPI). In the RPI problem, we consider a finite sequence of $n$ nonnegative independent random values with known distributions, and a known…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-07-24 Jose Correa , Sebastian Perez-Salazar , Dana Pizarro , Bruno Ziliotto

Prophet inequality concerns a basic optimal stopping problem and states that simple threshold stopping policies -- i.e., accepting the first reward larger than a certain threshold -- can achieve tight $\frac{1}{2}$-approximation to the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-31 Wei Tang , Haifeng Xu , Ruimin Zhang , Derek Zhu

We study the single-choice Prophet Inequality problem when the gambler is given access to samples. We show that the optimal competitive ratio of $1/2$ can be achieved with a single sample from each distribution. When the distributions are…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-09-12 Aviad Rubinstein , Jack Z. Wang , S. Matthew Weinberg

Prophet inequalities compare online stopping strategies against an omniscient "prophet" using distributional knowledge. In this work, we augment this model with a conservative prediction of the maximum realized value. We quantify the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-20 Johannes Brüstle , Ilan Reuven Cohen , Stefano Leonardi

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
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