Related papers: A Simple Search Problem
The main goal of this paper is to put some known results in a common perspective and to simplify their proofs. We start with a simple proof of a result from (Vereshchagin, 2002) saying that $\limsup_n\KS(x|n)$ (here $\KS(x|n)$ is…
For $2\le k\in\mathbb{N}$, consider the following adaptation of the classical secretary problem. There are $k$ items at each of $n$ linearly ordered ranks. The $kn$ items are revealed, one item at a time, in a uniformly random order, to an…
Consider $2k-1$ voters, each of which has a preference ranking between $n$ given alternatives. An alternative $A$ is called a Condorcet winner, if it wins against every other alternative $B$ in majority voting (meaning that for every other…
Consider the following generalization of the classic binary search problem: A searcher is required to find a hidden target vertex $x$ in a graph $G$. To do so, they iteratively perform queries to an oracle, each about a chosen vertex $v$.…
For a broad class of input-output maps, arguments based on the coding theorem from algorithmic information theory (AIT) predict that simple (low Kolmogorov complexity) outputs are exponentially more likely to occur upon uniform random…
This Ph.D. thesis concerns the version of the classical coupon collector's problem, when a collector samples with replacement a set of $n\ge 2$ distinct coupons so that at each time any one of the $n$ coupons is drawn with the same…
In a sampling problem, we are given an input x, and asked to sample approximately from a probability distribution D_x. In a search problem, we are given an input x, and asked to find a member of a nonempty set A_x with high probability. (An…
We study a general stochastic probing problem defined on a universe V, where each element e in V is "active" independently with probability p_e. Elements have weights {w_e} and the goal is to maximize the weight of a chosen subset S of…
A fundamental problem in computer science is to find all the common zeroes of $m$ quadratic polynomials in $n$ unknowns over $\mathbb{F}_2$. The cryptanalysis of several modern ciphers reduces to this problem. Up to now, the best complexity…
We consider a parallel version of a classical Bayesian search problem. $k$ agents are looking for a treasure that is placed in one of the boxes indexed by $\mathbb{N}^+$ according to a known distribution $p$. The aim is to minimize the…
Consider N equally-spaced points on a circle of circumference N. Choose at random n points out of $N$ on this circle and append clockwise an arc of integral length k to each such point. The resulting random set is made of a random number of…
We focus on the average-case analysis: A function w : V -> Z+ is given which defines the likelihood for a node to be the one marked, and we want the strategy that minimizes the expected number of queries. Prior to this paper, very little…
The goal of this work is to prove a new sure upper bound in a setting that can be thought of as a simplified function field analogue. This result is comparable to a recent result of the author concerning almost sure upper bound of random…
In this paper, we obtain a number of new simple pseudo-polynomial time algorithms on the well-known knapsack problem, focusing on the running time dependency on the number of items $n$, the maximum item weight $w_\mathrm{max}$, and the…
The traditional approach to choosing moves in game-playing programs is the minimax procedure. The general belief underlying its use is that increasing search depth improves play. Recent research has shown that given certain simplifying…
We revisit the classic Pandora's Box (PB) problem under correlated distributions on the box values. Recent work of arXiv:1911.01632 obtained constant approximate algorithms for a restricted class of policies for the problem that visit boxes…
The working-set bound [Sleator and Tarjan, J. ACM, 1985] roughly states that searching for an element is fast if the element was accessed recently. Binary search trees, such as splay trees, can achieve this property in the amortized sense,…
This paper revisits the well known single machine scheduling problem to minimize total weighted completion times. The twist is that job sizes are stochastic from unknown distributions, and the scheduler has access to only a single sample…
The paper is concerned with the classical occupancy scheme with infinitely many boxes, in which $n$ balls are thrown independently into boxes $1,2,...$, with probability $p_j$ of hitting the box $j$, where $p_1\geq p_2\geq...>0$ and…
Given a probability distribution P, what is the minimum amount of bits needed to store a value x sampled according to P, such that x can later be recovered (except with some small probability)? Or, what is the maximum amount of uniform…