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The prophet and secretary problems demonstrate online scenarios involving the optimal stopping theory. In a typical prophet or secretary problem, selection decisions are assumed to be immediate and irrevocable. However, many online settings…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-11-07 Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Ilan Nehama

We consider a combinatorial auction setting where buyers have fractionally subadditive (XOS) valuations over the items and the seller's objective is to maximize the social welfare. A prophet inequality in this setting bounds the competitive…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-23 Shuchi Chawla , Trung Dang , Zhiyi Huang , Yifan Wang

We study online contention resolution schemes (OCRSs) and prophet inequalities for non-product distributions. Specifically, when the active set is sampled according to a pairwise-independent (PI) distribution, we show a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Anupam Gupta , Jinqiao Hu , Gregory Kehne , Roie Levin

Prophet inequalities and secretary problems have been extensively studied in recent years due to their elegance, connections to online algorithms, stochastic optimization, and mechanism design problems in game theoretic settings. Rubinstein…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-07-09 Chandra Chekuri , Vasilis Livanos

In a classical online decision problem, a decision-maker who is trying to maximize her value inspects a sequence of arriving items to learn their values (drawn from known distributions), and decides when to stop the process by taking the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-05-26 Nicole Immorlica , Sahil Singla , Bo Waggoner

The prophet inequality is one of the cornerstone problems in optimal stopping theory and has become a crucial tool for designing sequential algorithms in Bayesian settings. In the i.i.d. $k$-selection prophet inequality problem, we…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-04-21 Johannes Brustle , Sebastian Perez-Salazar , Victor Verdugo

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 learning-augmented variant of the secretary problem, recently introduced by Fujii and Yoshida (2023), in which the decision-maker has access to machine-learned predictions of candidate values. The central challenge is to balance…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Helia Karisani , Mohammadreza Daneshvaramoli , Hedyeh Beyhaghi , Mohammad Hajiesmaili , Cameron Musco

We devise a general graph-theoretic framework for studying prophet inequalities. In this framework, an agent traverses a directed acyclic graph from a starting node $s$ to a target node $t$. Each edge has a value that is sampled from a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-21 Andrés Cristi , Sigal Oren

We study the i.i.d. $k$-selection prophet inequality problem, where a decision-maker sequentially observes $n$ independent nonnegative rewards and may accept at most $k$ of them without knowledge of future realizations. The objective is to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-24 Jieming Kong , Karthyek Murthy

In online combinatorial allocations/auctions, n bidders sequentially arrive, each with a combinatorial valuation (such as submodular/XOS) over subsets of m indivisible items. The aim is to immediately allocate a subset of the remaining…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-18 Paul Dütting , Thomas Kesselheim , Brendan Lucier , Rebecca Reiffenhäuser , Sahil Singla

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

We study the prophet inequality when the gambler has an access only to a single sample from each distribution. Rubinstein, Wang and Weinberg showed that an optimal guarantee of 1/2 can be achieved when the underlying matroid has rank 1,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-03 Kanstantsin Pashkovich , Alice Sayutina

We study the greedy-based online algorithm for edge-weighted matching with (one-sided) vertex arrivals in bipartite graphs, and edge arrivals in general graphs. This algorithm was first studied more than a decade ago by Korula and P\'al for…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-12-28 Haim Kaplan , David Naori , Danny Raz

Free order prophet inequalities bound the ratio between the expected value obtained by two parties each selecting a value from a set of independent random variables: a "prophet" who knows the value of each variable and may select the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-10-20 Makis Arsenis , Odysseas Drosis , Robert Kleinberg

Prophet inequalities are fundamental optimal stopping problems, where a decision-maker observes sequentially items with values sampled independently from known distributions, and must decide at each new observation to either stop and gain…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Ziyad Benomar , Dorian Baudry , Vianney Perchet

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

We consider the online stochastic matching problem for bipartite graphs where edges adjacent to an online node must be probed to determine if they exist, based on known edge probabilities. Our algorithms respect commitment, in that if a…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2021-08-02 Allan Borodin , Calum MacRury , Akash Rakheja

In this paper, we survey literature on prophet inequalities for subadditive combinatorial auctions. We give an overview of the previous best $O(\log \log m)$ prophet inequality as well as the preceding $O(\log m)$ prophet inequality. Then,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Dwaipayan Saha , Ananya Parashar