English
Related papers

Related papers: Optimal Stopping Methodology for the Secretary Pro…

200 papers

We develop methods to solve general optimal stopping problems with opportunities to stop that arrive randomly. Such problems occur naturally in applications with market frictions. Pivotal to our approach is that our methods operate on…

We investigate the hiring problem where a sequence of applicants is sequentially interviewed, and a decision on whether to hire an applicant is immediately made based on the applicant's score. For the maximal and average improvement…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-03 P. L. Krapivsky

We study the success probability for a variant of the secretary problem, with noisy observations and multiple offline selection. Our formulation emulates, and is motivated by, problems involving noisy selection arising in the disciplines of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-11 Robert Chin , Jonathan E. Rowe , Iman Shames , Chris Manzie , Dragan Nešić

In the best choice problem with random arrivals, an unknown number $n$ of rankable items arrive at times sampled from the uniform distribution. As is well known, a real-time player can ensure stopping at the overall best item with…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-03-09 Alexander Gnedin

In this paper, we study the optimal stopping problem in the so-called exploratory framework, in which the agent takes actions randomly conditioning on current state and an entropy-regularized term is added to the reward functional. Such a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-04 Yuchao Dong

Optimising queries in real-world situations under imperfect conditions is still a problem that has not been fully solved. We consider finding the optimal order in which to execute a given set of selection operators under partial ignorance…

Databases · Computer Science 2015-07-30 Khaled H. Alyoubi , Sven Helmer , Peter T. Wood

In classical secretary problems, a sequence of $n$ elements arrive in a uniformly random order, and we want to choose a single item, or a set of size $K$. The random order model allows us to escape from the strong lower bounds for the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-12-02 Domagoj Bradac , Anupam Gupta , Sahil Singla , Goran Zuzic

We consider generalizations of the classical secretary problem, also known as the problem of optimal choice, to posets where the only information we have is the size of the poset and the number of maximal elements. We show that, given this…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-06-29 Bryn Garrod , Robert Morris

For many online problems, it is known that the uniform arrival order enables the design of algorithms with much better performance guarantees than under worst-case. The quintessential example is the secretary problem. If the sequence of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-02-10 Thomas Kesselheim , Robert Kleinberg , Rad Niazadeh

The prospect of finding love may be scary but the prospect of committing to a relationship for the rest of your life is almost certainly scary. The secretary problem is a parallel to romantic decision making where an individual decides when…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2015-01-06 Rashied Amini

The J-choice K-best secretary problem, also known as the (J,K)-secretary problem, is a generalization of the classical secretary problem. An algorithm for the (J,K)-secretary problem is allowed to make J choices and the payoff to be…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-07-03 T-H. Hubert Chan , Fei Chen

The \emph{Temp Secretary Problem} was recently introduced by Fiat et al. It is a generalization of the Secretary Problem, in which commitments are temporary for a fixed duration. We present a simple online algorithm with improved…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-06-23 Thomas Kesselheim , Andreas Tönnis

This paper answers a long-standing open question concerning the $1/e$-strategy for the problem of best choice. $N$ candidates for a job arrive at times independently uniformly distributed in $[0,1]$. The interviewer knows how each candidate…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-12-25 F. Thomas Bruss , L. C. G. Rogers

Algorithms with predictions is a recent framework for decision-making under uncertainty that leverages the power of machine-learned predictions without making any assumption about their quality. The goal in this framework is for algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-22 Eric Balkanski , Will Ma , Andreas Maggiori

In this paper we present the Warm-starting Dynamic Thresholding algorithm, developed using dynamic programming, for a variant of the standard online selection problem. The problem allows job positions to be either free or already occupied…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-02-21 Mathilde Fekom , Nicolas Vayatis , Argyris Kalogeratos

We solve a sequential decision-making problem under uncertainty that takes into account the failure probability of a task. This problem cannot be handled by the stochastic shortest path problem, which is the standard model for sequential…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-26 Ritsusamuel Otsubo

Given integers $1\leq k<n$, the Gusein-Zade version of a generalized secretary problem is to choose one of the $k$ best of $n$ candidates for a secretary, which are interviewing in random order. The stopping rule in the selection is based…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-10-19 Adam Woryna

In this paper we introduce the hiring under uncertainty problem to model the questions faced by hiring committees in large enterprises and universities alike. Given a set of $n$ eligible candidates, the decision maker needs to choose the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-05-08 Manish Raghavan , Manish Purohit , Sreenivas Gollupadi

Robbins' problem of optimal stopping asks one to minimise the expected {\it rank} of observation chosen by some nonanticipating stopping rule. We settle a conjecture regarding the {\it value} of the stopped variable under the rule optimal…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-07-10 Alexander Gnedin , Alexander Iksanov

In the secretary problem, a set of secretary candidates arrive in a uniformly random order and reveal their values one by one. A company, who can only hire one candidate and hopes to maximize the expected value of its hire, needs to make…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-02-16 Mohammad Mahdian , Jieming Mao , Enze Sun , Kangning Wang , Yifan Wang