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Related papers: Secretary Problems: The Power of a Single Sample

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We define a new selection problem, \emph{Selecting with History}, which extends the secretary problem to a setting with historical information. We propose a strategy for this problem and calculate its success probability in the limit of a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-09-27 Tom Hess , Sivan Sabato

In this work, we study the single-choice prophet inequality problem, where a gambler faces a sequence of~$n$ online i.i.d. random variables drawn from an unknown distribution. When a variable reveals its value, the gambler needs to decide…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-08-23 Bo Li , Xiaowei Wu , Yutong Wu

We consider the secretary problem through the lens of learning-augmented algorithms. As it is known that the best possible expected competitive ratio is $1/e$ in the classic setting without predictions, a natural goal is to design…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Davin Choo , Chun Kai Ling

We study a variant of the single-choice prophet inequality problem where the decision-maker does not know the underlying distribution and has only access to a set of samples from the distributions. Rubinstein et al. [2020] showed that the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-04 Tomer Ezra

We study the prophet secretary problem, a well-studied variant of the classic prophet inequality, where values are drawn from independent known distributions but arrive in uniformly random order. Upon seeing a value at each step, the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-19 Paul Dütting , Evangelia Gergatsouli , Rojin Rezvan , Yifeng Teng , Alexandros Tsigonias-Dimitriadis

In this paper, we present a novel method for computing the asymptotic values of both the optimal threshold, and the probability of success in sequences of optimal stopping problems. This method, based on the resolution of a first-order…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-05-18 L. Bayón , P. Fortuny , J. M. Grau , A. M. Oller-Marcén , M. M. Ruiz

The game of best choice (also known as the secretary problem) is a model for sequential decision making with a long history and many variations. The classical setup assumes that the sequence of candidate rankings are uniformly distributed.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-11-06 Brant Jones

In the Secretary Problem, one has to hire the best among n candidates. The candidates are interviewed, one at a time, at a random order, and one has to decide on the spot, whether to hire a candidate or continue interviewing. It is well…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-07-23 Moran Feldman , Rani Izsak

In the subject of optimal stopping, the classical secretary problem is concerned with optimally selecting the best of $n$ candidates when their relative ranks are observed sequentially. This problem has been extended to optimally selecting…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-12-06 Yi-Shen Lin , Shoou-Ren Hsiau , Yi-Ching Yao

We study single-sample prophet inequalities (SSPIs), i.e., prophet inequalities where only a single sample from each prior distribution is available. Besides a direct, and optimal, SSPI for the basic single choice problem [Rubinstein et…

We revisit the knapsack-secretary problem (Babaioff et al.; APPROX 2007), a generalization of the classic secretary problem in which items have different sizes and multiple items may be selected if their total size does not exceed the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-08-11 Andreas Abels , Leon Ladewig , Kevin Schewior , Moritz Stinzendörfer

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

The random-order or secretary model is one of the most popular beyond-worst case model for online algorithms. While it avoids the pessimism of the traditional adversarial model, in practice we cannot expect the input to be presented in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Thomas Kesselheim , Marco Molinaro

We study the single-choice Prophet Inequality problem when the gambler is given access to samples. We show that the optimal competitive ratio of $1/2$ can be achieved with a single sample from each distribution. When the distributions are…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-09-12 Aviad Rubinstein , Jack Z. Wang , S. Matthew Weinberg

In the "secretary problem", well-known in the theory of optimal stopping, an employer is about to interview a maximum of N secretaries about which she has no prior information. Chow et al. proved that with an optimal strategy the expected…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Kimmo Eriksson , Jonas Sjostrand , Pontus Strimling

In a matroid secretary problem, one is presented with a sequence of objects of various weights in a random order, and must choose irrevocably to accept or reject each item. There is a further constraint that the set of items selected must…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-01-22 David Harris , Manish Purohit

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-08-23 Puck te Rietmole , Marc Uetz

We study a "pen testing" problem, in which we are given $n$ pens with unknown amounts of ink $X_1, X_2, \ldots, X_n$, and we want to choose a pen with the maximum amount of remaining ink in it. The challenge is that we cannot access each…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-11-23 Mingda Qiao , Gregory Valiant

We study the secretary problem in which rank-ordered lists are generated by the Mallows model and the goal is to identify the highest-ranked candidate through a sequential interview process which does not allow rejected candidates to be…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-03-03 Xujun Liu , Olgica Milenkovic , George V. Moustakides

The classical analysis of online algorithms, due to its worst-case nature, can be quite pessimistic when the input instance at hand is far from worst-case. Often this is not an issue with machine learning approaches, which shine in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-10-22 Antonios Antoniadis , Themis Gouleakis , Pieter Kleer , Pavel Kolev