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We study a continuous and infinite time horizon counterpart to the classic prophet inequality, which we term the stationary prophet inequality problem. Here, copies of a good arrive and perish according to Poisson point processes. Buyers…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-07-23 Kristen Kessel , Amin Saberi , Ali Shameli , David Wajc

There is a rising interest for studying the online benchmark as an alternative of the classical offline benchmark in online stochastic settings. Ezra, Feldman, Gravin, and Tang (SODA 2023) introduced the notion of order-competitive ratio,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-06-24 Liyan Chen , Nuozhou Sun , Zhihao Gavin Tang

We take a unifying approach to single selection optimal stopping problems with random arrival order and independent sampling of items. In the problem we consider, a decision maker (DM) initially gets to sample each of $N$ items…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-08-11 José Correa , Andrés Cristi , Boris Epstein , José Soto

Optimal stopping theory is a powerful tool for analyzing scenarios such as online auctions in which we generally require optimizing an objective function over the space of stopping rules for an allocation process under uncertainty. Perhaps…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-10-16 Hossein Esfandiari , MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Vahid Liaghat , Morteza Monemizadeh

A benevolent advisor observes a project's complexity and posts a pass - fail threshold before the agent chooses effort. The project succeeds only if ability and effort together clear complexity. We compare two informational regimes. In the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-08 Georgy Lukyanov , Mark Izgarshev

Due to their numerous applications, in particular in Mechanism Design, Prophet Inequalities have experienced a surge of interest. They describe competitive ratios for basic stopping time problems where random variables get revealed…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Moran Feldman , Ola Svensson , Rico Zenklusen

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

We consider the problem of hypothesis testing for discrete distributions. In the standard model, where we have sample access to an underlying distribution $p$, extensive research has established optimal bounds for uniformity testing,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-03 Maryam Aliakbarpour , Piotr Indyk , Ronitt Rubinfeld , Sandeep Silwal

We study the polynomial-time approximability of the optimal online stochastic bipartite matching algorithm, initiated by Papadimitriou et al. (EC'21). Here, nodes on one side of the graph are given upfront, while at each time $t$, an online…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-07-23 Mark Braverman , Mahsa Derakhshan , Tristan Pollner , Amin Saberi , David Wajc

We study matroid prophet inequalities when distributions are unknown and accessible only through samples. While single-sample prophet inequalities for special matroids are known, no constant-factor competitive algorithm with even a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Hu Fu , Pinyan Lu , Zhihao Gavin Tang , Hongxun Wu , Jinzhao Wu , Qianfan Zhang

We consider the problem of estimating a function from $n$ noisy samples whose discrete Total Variation (TV) is bounded by $C_n$. We reveal a deep connection to the seemingly disparate problem of Strongly Adaptive online learning (Daniely et…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-27 Dheeraj Baby , Xuandong Zhao , Yu-Xiang Wang

Prophet inequalities compare the expected performance of an online algorithm for a stochastic optimization problem to the expected optimal solution in hindsight. They are a major alternative to classic worst-case competitive analysis, of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-04-22 Paul Dütting , Thomas Kesselheim , Brendan Lucier

In this paper, we investigate the online allocation problem of maximizing the overall revenue subject to both lower and upper bound constraints. Compared to the extensively studied online problems with only resource upper bounds, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-31 Qixin Zhang , Wenbing Ye , Zaiyi Chen , Haoyuan Hu , Enhong Chen , Yang Yu

We develop approximation algorithms for set-selection problems with deterministic constraints, but random objective values, i.e., stochastic probing problems. When the goal is to maximize the objective, approximation algorithms for probing…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-11-04 Weina Wang , Anupam Gupta , Jalani Williams

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

The prophet inequalities problem has received significant study over the past decades and has several applications such as to online auctions. In this paper, we study two variants of the i.i.d. prophet inequalities problem, namely the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-12-01 William Marshall , Nolan Miranda , Albert Zuo

In this paper we consider estimation of sparse covariance matrices and propose a thresholding procedure which is adaptive to the variability of individual entries. The estimators are fully data driven and enjoy excellent performance both…

Methodology · Statistics 2011-02-14 Tony Cai , Weidong Liu

We introduce a new decomposition technique for random variables that maps a generic instance of the prophet inequalities problem to a new instance where all but a constant number of variables have a tractable structure that we refer to as…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-11-10 Allen Liu , Renato Paes Leme , Martin Pal , Jon Schneider , Balasubramanian Sivan

Object-oriented software metrics provide a numerical characterization of software quality. They have also been used in the assessment and identification of technical debt. However, metrics generally need to be used with thresholds as…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-04-05 Sultan Alhusain

A major technique in learning-augmented online algorithms is combining multiple algorithms or predictors. Since the performance of each predictor may vary over time, it is desirable to use not the single best predictor as a benchmark, but…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Antonios Antoniadis , Christian Coester , Marek Eliáš , Adam Polak , Bertrand Simon