Related papers: Sharp Noisy Binary Search with Monotonic Probabili…

In this paper, the monotone submodular maximization problem (SM) is studied. SM is to find a subset of size $\kappa$ from a universe of size $n$ that maximizes a monotone submodular objective function $f$. We show using a novel analysis…

Binary search finds a given element in a sorted array with an optimal number of $\log n$ queries. However, binary search fails even when the array is only slightly disordered or access to its elements is subject to errors. We study the…

Explorable heap selection is the problem of selecting the $n$th smallest value in a binary heap. The key values can only be accessed by traversing through the underlying infinite binary tree, and the complexity of the algorithm is measured…

We analyze the robustness of Grover's quantum search algorithm performed by a quantum register under a possibly time-correlated noise acting locally on the qubits. We model the noise as originating from an arbitrary but fixed unitary…

This note considers a variation of the full-information secretary problem where the random variables to be observed are independent and identically distributed. Consider $X_1,\dots,X_n$ to be an independent sequence of random variables, let…

We consider the problem of closeness testing for two discrete distributions in the practically relevant setting of \emph{unequal} sized samples drawn from each of them. Specifically, given a target error parameter $\varepsilon > 0$, $m_1$…

We study a problem related to coin flipping, coding theory, and noise sensitivity. Consider a source of truly random bits $x \in \bits^n$, and $k$ parties, who have noisy versions of the source bits $y^i \in \bits^n$, where for all $i$ and…

We consider the algorithm by Ferson et al. (Reliable computing 11(3), p. 207-233, 2005) designed for solving the NP-hard problem of computing the maximal sample variance over interval data, motivated by robust statistics (in fact, the…

We study a generalized binary search problem on the line and general trees. On the line (e.g., a sorted array), binary search finds a target node in $O(\log n)$ queries in the worst case, where $n$ is the number of nodes. In situations with…

Let $[q] = \{0,1,\ldots,q-1\}$, let $\Delta[q]$ denote the simplex of probability measures on $[q]$, and let $\gamma$ denote the Lebesgue measure normalized on $\Delta[q]$. We prove that for any symmetric monotone function $f \colon[q]^n…

The random assignment problem asks for the minimum-cost perfect matching in the complete $n\times n$ bipartite graph $\Knn$ with i.i.d. edge weights, say uniform on $[0,1]$. In a remarkable work by Aldous (2001), the optimal cost was shown…

Many axiomatic definitions of entropy, such as the R\'enyi entropy, of a random variable are closely related to the $\ell_{\alpha}$-norm of its probability distribution. This study considers probability distributions on finite sets, and…

Consider the following generalization of the classic binary search problem: a searcher is required to find a hidden vertex $x$ in a tree $T$. To do so, they iteratively perform queries to an oracle, each about a chosen vertex $v$. After…

Let $q \in (0,1)$ and $\delta \in (0,1)$ be real numbers, and let $C$ be a coin that comes up heads with an unknown probability $p$, such that $p \neq q$. We present an algorithm that, on input $C$, $q$, and $\delta$, decides, with…

Consider a query-based data acquisition problem that aims to recover the values of $k$ binary variables from parity (XOR) measurements of chosen subsets of the variables. Assume the response model where only a randomly selected subset of…

This work generalizes the binary search problem to a $d$-dimensional domain $S_1\times\cdots\times S_d$, where $S_i=\{0, 1, \ldots,n_i-1\}$ and $d\geq 1$, in the following way. Given $(t_1,\ldots,t_d)$, the target element to be found, the…

Benjamini, Kalai and Schramm (2001) showed that weighted majority functions of $n$ independent unbiased bits are uniformly stable under noise: when each bit is flipped with probability $\epsilon$, the probability $p_\epsilon$ that the…

The Knaster-Tarski theorem, also known as Tarski's theorem, guarantees that every monotone function defined on a complete lattice has a fixed point. We analyze the query complexity of finding such a fixed point on the $k$-dimensional grid…

We consider the basic problem of learning Single-Index Models with respect to the square loss under the Gaussian distribution in the presence of adversarial label noise. Our main contribution is the first computationally efficient algorithm…

The distinct elements problem is one of the fundamental problems in streaming algorithms --- given a stream of integers in the range $\{1,\ldots,n\}$, we wish to provide a $(1+\varepsilon)$ approximation to the number of distinct elements…