Related papers: The Distribution of Argmaximum or a Winner Problem
We obtain revenue guarantees for the simple pricing mechanism of a single posted price, in terms of a natural parameter of the distribution of buyers' valuations. Our revenue guarantee applies to the single item n buyers setting, with…
We give the distribution of $M_n$, the maximum of a sequence of $n$ observations from a moving average of order 1. Solutions are first given in terms of repeated integrals and then for the case where the underlying independent random…
We consider a problem in parametric estimation: given $n$ samples from an unknown distribution, we want to estimate which distribution, from a given one-parameter family, produced the data. Following Schulman and Vazirani, we evaluate an…
Let $\{X_n\}_n$ be a sequence of freely independent, identically distributed non-commutative random variables. Consider a sequence $\{W_n\}_n$ of the renormalized spectral maximum of random variables $X_1,\cdots, X_n$. It is known that the…
We present a generalization of the maximal inequalities that upper bound the expectation of the maximum of $n$ jointly distributed random variables. We control the expectation of a randomly selected random variable from $n$ jointly…
The distribution of the sum of independent identically distributed uniform random variables is well-known. However, it is sometimes necessary to analyze data which have been drawn from different uniform distributions. By inverting the…
Certain extremum estimators have asymptotic distributions that are non-Gaussian, yet characterizable as the distribution of the $\argmax$ of a Gaussian process. This paper presents high-level sufficient conditions under which such…
We give a detailed proof, in the identically distributed case, of a conjecture of Feige about the maximum probability that the sum of n independent non-negative integer valued random variables, each of mean 1, exceeds n. The general case is…
We consider n agents located on the vertices of a connected graph. Each agent v receives a signal X_v(0)~N(s, 1) where s is an unknown quantity. A natural iterative way of estimating s is to perform the following procedure. At iteration t +…
A classical result due to Deshouillers, Dress and Tenenbaum asserts that on average the distribution of the divisors of the integers follows the arcsine law. In this paper, we investigate the distribution of smooth divisors of the integers,…
Let $H_d(n,p)$ signify a random $d$-uniform hypergraph with $n$ vertices in which each of the ${n}\choose{d}$ possible edges is present with probability $p=p(n)$ independently, and let $H_d(n,m)$ denote a uniformly distributed with $n$…
We consider the problem of estimating the mean of a random vector based on i.i.d. observations and adversarial contamination. We introduce a multivariate extension of the trimmed-mean estimator and show its optimal performance under minimal…
In applied probability, the normal approximation is often used for the distribution of data with assumed additive structure. This tradition is based on the central limit theorem for sums of (independent) random variables. However, it is…
A casino offers the following game. There are three cups each containing a die. You are being told that the dice in the cups are all the same, but possibly nonstandard. For a bet of \$1, the game master shakes all three cups and lets you…
That there exist two losing games that can be combined, either by random mixture or by nonrandom alternation, to form a winning game is known as Parrondo's paradox. We establish a strong law of large numbers and a central limit theorem for…
Consider $n$ players whose "scores" are independent and identically distributed values $\{X_i\}_{i=1}^n$ from some discrete distribution $F$. We pay special attention to the cases where (i) $F$ is geometric with parameter $p\to0$ and (ii)…
In this work we present a detailed analysis using the Markov chain theory of some versions of the truel game in which three players try to eliminate each other in a series of one-to-one competitions, using the rules of the game. Besides…
Let $X$, $X_1$, $X_2$, $...$ be i.i.d. random variables, and let $S_n=X_1+... + X_n$ be the partial sums and $M_n=\max_{k\le n}|S_k|$ be the maximum partial sums. We give the sufficient and necessary conditions for a kind of limit theorems…
We study the optimal stopping problem of maximizing the variance of an unkilled linear diffusion. Especially, we demonstrate how the problem can be solved as a convex two-player zero-sum game, and reveal quite surprising application of game…
Consider a sequence of $n$ independent random variables with a common continuous distribution $F$, and consider the task of choosing an increasing subsequence where the observations are revealed sequentially and where an observation must be…