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Generating adversarial examples in a black-box setting retains a significant challenge with vast practical application prospects. In particular, existing black-box attacks suffer from the need for excessive queries, as it is non-trivial to…
We consider optimization of nonlinear objective functions that balance $d$ linear criteria over $n$-element independence systems presented by linear-optimization oracles. For $d=1$, we have previously shown that an $r$-best approximate…
Factor Analysis (FA) is a technique of fundamental importance that is widely used in classical and modern multivariate statistics, psychometrics and econometrics. In this paper, we revisit the classical rank-constrained FA problem, which…
We study the max-min fair allocation problem in which a set of $m$ indivisible items are to be distributed among $n$ agents such that the minimum utility among all agents is maximized. In the restricted setting, the utility of each item $j$…
The problem of minimizing a polynomial over the standard simplex is one of the basic NP-hard nonlinear optimization problems --- it contains the maximum clique problem in graphs as a special case. It is known that the problem allows a…
In the highway problem, we are given an n-edge line graph (the highway), and a set of paths (the drivers), each one with its own budget. For a given assignment of edge weights (the tolls), the highway owner collects from each driver the…
We formalize the problem of selecting the optimal set of options for planning as that of computing the smallest set of options so that planning converges in less than a given maximum of value-iteration passes. We first show that the problem…
Research in reinforcement learning has produced algorithms for optimal decision making under uncertainty that fall within two main types. The first employs a Bayesian framework, where optimality improves with increased computational time.…
This paper addresses the challenge of improving finite sample performance in Ranking and Selection by developing a Bahadur-Rao type expansion for the Probability of Correct Selection (PCS). While traditional large deviations approximations…
We show that for the problem of testing if a matrix $A \in F^{n \times n}$ has rank at most $d$, or requires changing an $\epsilon$-fraction of entries to have rank at most $d$, there is a non-adaptive query algorithm making…
Nonconvex optimization problems with an L1-constraint are ubiquitous, and are found in many application domains including: optimal control of hybrid systems, machine learning and statistics, and operations research. This paper shows that…
This paper describes the structure of optimal policies for discounted periodic-review single-commodity total-cost inventory control problems with fixed ordering costs for finite and infinite horizons. There are known conditions in the…
Reinforcement learning is widely used in applications where one needs to perform sequential decisions while interacting with the environment. The problem becomes more challenging when the decision requirement includes satisfying some safety…
The Wahba problem, also known as rotation search, seeks to find the best rotation to align two sets of vector observations given putative correspondences, and is a fundamental routine in many computer vision and robotics applications. This…
Consider a network design application where we wish to lay down a minimum-cost spanning tree in a given graph; however, we only have stochastic information about the edge costs. To learn the precise cost of any edge, we have to conduct a…
While powerful tools have been developed to analyze quantum query complexity, there are still many natural problems that do not fit neatly into the black box model of oracles. We create a new model that allows multiple oracles with…
The dynamic optimality conjecture, postulating the existence of an $O(1)$-competitive online algorithm for binary search trees (BSTs), is among the most fundamental open problems in dynamic data structures. Despite extensive work and some…
Search engines answer users' queries by listing relevant items (e.g. documents, songs, products, web pages, ...). These engines rely on algorithms that learn to rank items so as to present an ordered list maximizing the probability that it…
Given a weighted, ordered query set $Q$ and a partition of $Q$ into classes, we study the problem of computing a minimum-cost decision tree that, given any query $q$ in $Q$, uses equality tests and less-than comparisons to determine the…
In the knapsack problem under explorable uncertainty, we are given a knapsack instance with uncertain item profits. Instead of having access to the precise profits, we are only given uncertainty intervals that are guaranteed to contain the…