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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

Motivating careerists is challenging for political organizations. Without explicit contracts, careerists often pander to public opinions or their superiors' preferences. Worse, when tasked with implementing these distorted decisions, they…

General Economics · Economics 2026-05-15 Liqun Liu

We consider an intermediary's problem of dynamically matching demand and supply of heterogeneous types in a periodic-review fashion. More specifically, there are two disjoint sets of demand and supply types, and a reward associated with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-11-20 Ming Hu , Yun Zhou

This paper studies a risk-sensitive decision-making problem under uncertainty. It considers a decision-making process that unfolds over a fixed number of stages, in which a decision-maker chooses among multiple alternatives, some of which…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-07 Chung-Han Hsieh , Yi-Shan Wong

In dynamic programming and reinforcement learning, the policy for the sequential decision making of an agent in a stochastic environment is usually determined by expressing the goal as a scalar reward function and seeking a policy that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-26 Simon Dima , Simon Fischer , Jobst Heitzig , Joss Oliver

Proportional ranking rules aggregate approval-style preferences of agents into a collective ranking such that groups of agents with similar preferences are adequately represented. Motivated by the application of live Q&A platforms, where…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-05-18 Jonas Israel , Markus Brill

The secretary problem is one of the fundamental problems in online decision making; a tight competitive ratio for this problem of $1/\mathrm{e} \approx 0.368$ has been known since the 1960s. Much more recently, the study of algorithms with…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-10-01 Alexander Braun , Sherry Sarkar

We formulate and analyze a generic sequential resource access problem arising in a variety of engineering fields, where a user disposes a number of heterogeneous computing, communication, or storage resources, each characterized by the…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2020-12-08 Lin Chen , Anastasios Giovanidis , Wei Wang , Lin Shan

Machine learning relies on the assumption that unseen test instances of a classification problem follow the same distribution as observed training data. However, this principle can break down when machine learning is used to make important…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-24 Moritz Hardt , Nimrod Megiddo , Christos Papadimitriou , Mary Wootters

We revisit three fundamental problems in algorithms under uncertainty: the Secretary Problem, Prophet Inequality, and Stochastic Probing, each subject to general downward-closed constraints. When elements have binary values, all three…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Aviad Rubinstein , Sahil Singla

We consider a context-dependent ranking and selection problem. The best design is not universal but depends on the contexts. Under a Bayesian framework, we develop a dynamic sampling scheme for context-dependent optimization (DSCO) to…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-12-21 Haidong Li , Henry Lam , Zhe Liang , Yijie Peng

One way to interpret the classical secretary problem (CSP) is to consider it as a special case of the following problem. We observe $n$ independent indicator variables $I_1,I_2,\dotsc,I_n$ sequentially and we try to stop on the last…

Probability · Mathematics 2013-09-13 Rémi Dendievel

The classical secretary problem investigates the question of how to hire the best secretary from $n$ candidates who come in a uniformly random order. In this work we investigate a parallel generalizations of this problem introduced by…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-09-18 Xiaoming Sun , Jia Zhang , Jialin Zhang

Let us call a sequence of numbers heapable if they can be sequentially inserted to form a binary tree with the heap property, where each insertion subsequent to the first occurs at a leaf of the tree, i.e. below a previously placed number.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2010-07-15 John Byers , Brent Heeringa , Michael Mitzenmacher , Georgios Zervas

We develop a Bayesian model for decision-making under time pressure with endogenous information acquisition. In our model, the decision maker decides when to observe (costly) information by sampling an underlying continuous-time stochastic…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-10-25 Ahmed M. Alaa , Mihaela van der Schaar

A designer offers vertically-differentiated positions to agents in the absence of transfers. Agents have private outside options and may reject their offers ex-post. The designer has preferences over the quantity of agents who accept each…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-02-12 Morteza Honarvar , Joanna Krysta , Eric Tang

We consider the problem of designing an adaptive sequence of questions that optimally classify a candidate's ability into one of several categories or discriminative grades. A candidate's ability is modeled as an unknown parameter, which,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-14 Achal Bassamboo , Vikas Deep , Sandeep Juneja , Assaf Zeevi

We consider the problem of designing affirmative action policies for selecting the top-k candidates from a pool of applicants. We assume that for each candidate we have socio-demographic attributes and a series of variables that serve as…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2021-03-10 Michael Mathioudakis , Carlos Castillo , Giorgio Barnabo , Sergio Celis

The main contribution of this paper resides in providing novel algorithmic advances and analytical insights for the sequential hiring problem, a recently introduced dynamic optimization model where a firm adaptively fills a limited number…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Danny Segev , Uri Stein

We study online secretary problems with returns in combinatorial packing domains with $n$ candidates that arrive sequentially over time in random order. The goal is to accept a feasible packing of candidates of maximum total value. In the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-02-06 Martin Hoefer , Lisa Wilhelmi