Related papers: The secretary problem with items arriving accordin…
We solve the secretary problem in the case that the ranked items arrive in a statistically biased order rather than in uniformly random order. The bias is given by a Mallows distribution with parameter $q\in(0,1)$, so that higher ranked…
For $2\le k\in\mathbb{N}$, consider the following adaptation of the classical secretary problem. There are $k$ items at each of $n$ linearly ordered ranks. The $kn$ items are revealed, one item at a time, in a uniformly random order, to an…
We solve the secretary problem in the case that the ranked items arrive in a statistically biased order rather than in uniformly random order. The bias is given by the left-to-right-minimum exponentially tilted distribution with parameter…
In this paper, we investigate two variants of the secretary problem. In these variants, we are presented with a sequence of numbers $X_i$ that come from distributions $\mathcal{D}_i$, and that arrive in either random or adversarial order.…
We revisit the problem of selecting an item from $n$ choices that appear before us in random sequential order so as to minimize the expected rank of the item selected. In particular, we examine the stopping rule where we reject the first…
In the online random-arrival model, an algorithm receives a sequence of n requests that arrive in a random order. The algorithm is expected to make an irrevocable decision with regard to each request based only on the observed history. We…
We study variants of the secretary problem, where $N$, the number of candidates, is a random variable, and the decision maker wants to maximize the probability of success -- picking the largest number among the $N$ candidates -- using only…
We analyze the secretary problem in the case that the $n$ ranked items arrive not in uniformly random order but rather according to a certain type of Luce distribution or according to a Mallows distribution on the set $S_n$ of permutations…
For many online problems, it is known that the uniform arrival order enables the design of algorithms with much better performance guarantees than under worst-case. The quintessential example is the secretary problem. If the sequence of…
We consider two variations of the classical secretary problem. * A variation of the returning secretary problem where each interviewee may appear a second time with a fixed probability p. The decision-maker observes interviewees…
Suppose that $n$ items arrive online in random order and the goal is to select $k$ of them such that the expected sum of the selected items is maximized. The decision for any item is irrevocable and must be made on arrival without knowing…
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…
Suppose a customer is faced with a sequence of fluctuating prices, such as for airfare or a product sold by a large online retailer. Given distributional information about what price they might face each day, how should they choose when to…
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…
In classical secretary problems, a sequence of $n$ elements arrive in a uniformly random order, and we want to choose a single item, or a set of size $K$. The random order model allows us to escape from the strong lower bounds for the…
We study a twist on the classic secretary problem, which we term the secretary ranking problem: elements from an ordered set arrive in random order and instead of picking the maximum element, the algorithm is asked to assign a rank, or…
In the Prophet Secretary problem, samples from a known set of probability distributions arrive one by one in a uniformly random order, and an algorithm must irrevocably pick one of the samples as soon as it arrives. The goal is to maximize…
We present a number of positive and negative results for variants of the matroid secretary problem. Most notably, we design a constant-factor competitive algorithm for the "random assignment" model where the weights are assigned randomly to…
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…
We present a new variant of the secretary problem. Let $A$ be a totally ordered set of $n$ \emph{applicants}. Given $P\subseteq A$ and $x\in A$, let $rr(P,x)=\vert\{z\in P \mid z\leq x\}\vert\mbox{ }$ be the \emph{relative rank of} $x$…