Related papers: Lessons from the German Tank Problem
We show that randomization can lead to significant improvements for a few fundamental problems in distributed tracking. Our basis is the {\em count-tracking} problem, where there are $k$ players, each holding a counter $n_i$ that gets…
We relate the Fermi-Dirac statistics of an ideal Fermi gas in a harmonic trap to partitions of given integers into distinct parts, studied in number theory. Using methods of quantum statistical physics we derive analytic expressions for…
We discuss several ways of illustrating fundamental concepts in statistical and thermal physics by considering various models and algorithms. We emphasize the importance of replacing students' incomplete mental images by models that are…
Bayesian, classical, and extended maximum likelihood approaches to estimation of upper limits in experiments with small numbers of signal events are surveyed. The discussion covers only experiments whose outcomes are well described by a…
Stochastic reaction networks are mathematical models with a wide range of applications in biochemistry, ecology, and epidemiology, and are often complex to analyze. Except for some special cases, it is generally difficult to predict how the…
We consider the classic problem of $(\epsilon,\delta)$-PAC learning a best arm where the goal is to identify with confidence $1-\delta$ an arm whose mean is an $\epsilon$-approximation to that of the highest mean arm in a multi-armed bandit…
It can be important in Bayesian analyses of complex models to construct informative prior distributions which reflect knowledge external to the data at hand. Nevertheless, how much prior information an analyst can elicit from an expert will…
The brilliant method due to Good and Turing allows for estimating objects not occurring in a sample. The problem, known under names "sample coverage" or "missing mass" goes back to their cryptographic work during WWII, but over years has…
We consider the problem of determining the top-$k$ largest measurements from a dataset distributed among a network of $n$ agents with noisy communication links. We show that this scenario can be cast as a distributed convex optimization…
Quantum reservoir computing is a machine learning scheme in which a quantum system is used to perform information processing. A prospective approach to its physical realization is a photonic platform in which continuous variable (CV)…
We consider a problem of statistical mean estimation in which the samples are not observed directly, but are instead observed by a relay (``teacher'') that transmits information through a memoryless channel to the decoder (``student''), who…
Models in which the number of goals scored by a team in a soccer match follow a Poisson distribution, or a closely related one, have been widely discussed. We here consider a soccer match as an experiment to assess which of two teams is…
An arithmetic word problem typically includes a textual description containing several constant quantities. The key to solving the problem is to reveal the underlying mathematical relations (such as addition and subtraction) among…
This work addresses a version of the two-armed Bernoulli bandit problem where the sum of the means of the arms is one (the symmetric two-armed Bernoulli bandit). In a regime where the gap between these means goes to zero as the number of…
We consider the following problem in this paper: given a set of $n$ distributions, find the top-$m$ ones with the largest means. This problem is also called {\em top-$m$ arm identifications} in the literature of reinforcement learning, and…
The problem of identifying the best arm among a collection of items having Gaussian rewards distribution is well understood when the variances are known. Despite its practical relevance for many applications, few works studied it for…
The knapsack problem is one of the classical problems in combinatorial optimization: Given a set of items, each specified by its size and profit, the goal is to find a maximum profit packing into a knapsack of bounded capacity. In the…
Markov chains are a natural and well understood tool for describing one-dimensional patterns in time or space. We show how to infer $k$-th order Markov chains, for arbitrary $k$, from finite data by applying Bayesian methods to both…
We consider bandit problems involving a large (possibly infinite) collection of arms, in which the expected reward of each arm is a linear function of an $r$-dimensional random vector $\mathbf{Z} \in \mathbb{R}^r$, where $r \geq 2$. The…
The pure-exploration problem in stochastic multi-armed bandits aims to find one or more arms with the largest (or near largest) means. Examples include finding an {\epsilon}-good arm, best-arm identification, top-k arm identification, and…