Related papers: A Simple Search Problem
We are often interested in identifying the feasible subset of a decision space under multiple constraints to permit effective design exploration. If determining feasibility required computationally expensive simulations, the cost of…
The Pandora's Box problem models the search for the best alternative when evaluation is costly. In the simplest variant, a decision maker is presented with $n$ boxes, each associated with a cost of inspection and a hidden random reward. The…
We study a fundamental problem in optimization under uncertainty. There are $n$ boxes; each box $i$ contains a hidden reward $x_i$. Rewards are drawn i.i.d. from an unknown distribution $\mathcal{D}$. For each box $i$, we see $y_i$, an…
The subset sum algorithm is a natural heuristic for the classical Bin Packing problem: In each iteration, the algorithm finds among the unpacked items, a maximum size set of items that fits into a new bin. More than 35 years after its first…
This is a survey on the use of low-degree polynomials to predict and explain the apparent statistical-computational tradeoffs in a variety of average-case computational problems. In a nutshell, this framework measures the complexity of a…
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…
We consider a class of zero-sum search games in which a Hider hides one or more target among a set of $n$ boxes. The boxes may require differing amount of time to search, and detection may be imperfect, so that there is a certain…
Predicting the winner of an election is a favorite problem both for news media pundits and computational social choice theorists. Since it is often infeasible to elicit the preferences of all the voters in a typical prediction scenario, a…
Two central problems in Stochastic Optimization are Min Sum Set Cover and Pandora's Box. In Pandora's Box, we are presented with $n$ boxes, each containing an unknown value and the goal is to open the boxes in some order to minimize the sum…
Black-box complexity is a complexity theoretic measure for how difficult a problem is to be optimized by a general purpose optimization algorithm. It is thus one of the few means trying to understand which problems are tractable for genetic…
We consider a monopolist seller facing a single buyer with additive valuations over n heterogeneous, independent items. It is known that in this important setting optimal mechanisms may require randomization [HR12], use menus of infinite…
The Pandora's Box Problem, originally formalized by Weitzman in 1979, models selection from set of random, alternative options, when evaluation is costly. This includes, for example, the problem of hiring a skilled worker, where only one…
Several mathematical problems can be modeled as a search in a database. An example is the problem of finding the minimum of a function. Quantum algorithms for solving this problem have been proposed and all of them use the quantum search…
Given a simple polygon $P$ consisting of $n$ vertices, we study the problem of designing space-efficient algorithms for computing (i) the visibility polygon of a point inside $P$, (ii) the weak visibility polygon of a line segment inside…
The lottery ticket hypothesis has sparked the rapid development of pruning algorithms that aim to reduce the computational costs associated with deep learning during training and model deployment. Currently, such algorithms are primarily…
Consider the Hitting Set problem where, for a given universe $\mathcal{X} = \left\{ 1, ... , n \right\}$ and a collection of subsets $\mathcal{S}_1, ... , \mathcal{S}_m$, one seeks to identify the smallest subset of $\mathcal{X}$ which has…
The following problem is considered. Two players are each required to allocate a quota of~$n$ counters among~$k$ boxes labelled~$1,2,\ldots,k$. At times $t=1,2,3,\ldots$ a random box is identified; the probability of choosing box~$i$…
Weitzman (1979) introduced the Pandora Box problem as a model for sequential search with inspection costs, and gave an elegant index-based policy that attains provably optimal expected payoff. In various scenarios, the searching agent may…
Simple games cover voting systems in which a single alternative, such as a bill or an amendment, is pitted against the status quo. A simple game or a yes-no voting system is a set of rules that specifies exactly which collections of ``yea''…
Minimizing the rank of a matrix subject to constraints is a challenging problem that arises in many applications in control theory, machine learning, and discrete geometry. This class of optimization problems, known as rank minimization, is…