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This work introduces \emph{sharding} and \emph{Poissonization} as a unified framework for analyzing prophet inequalities. Sharding involves splitting a random variable into several independent random variables, shards, that collectively…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-04-05 Elfarouk Harb

We study online selection problems in both the prophet and secretary settings, when arriving agents have interdependent values. In the interdependent values model, introduced in the seminal work of Milgrom and Weber [1982], each agent has a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-04-10 Simon Mauras , Divyarthi Mohan , Rebecca Reiffenhäuser

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2011-12-13 Shayan Oveis Gharan , Jan Vondrák

We consider the problem of constructing probabilistic predictions that lead to accurate decisions when employed by downstream users to inform actions. For a single decision maker, designing an optimal predictor is equivalent to minimizing a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-15 Isaac Gibbs , Ryan J. Tibshirani

The value maximization version of the secretary problem is the problem of hiring a candidate with the largest value from a randomly ordered sequence of candidates. In this work, we consider a setting where predictions of candidate values…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-08-21 Kaito Fujii , Yuichi Yoshida

Optimal stopping problems give rise to random distributions describing how many applicants the decision-maker will sample or interview before choosing one, a quantity sometimes referred to as the search time or process duration. This…

Applications · Statistics 2019-12-13 Simon Demers

In this paper, we study twelve stochastic input models for online problems and reveal the relationships among the competitive ratios for the models. The competitive ratio is defined as the worst ratio between the expected optimal value and…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-09-25 Yasushi Kawase

A decision maker repeatedly chooses one of a finite set of actions. In each period, the decision maker's payoff depends on fixed basic payoff of the chosen action and the frequency with which the action has been chosen in the past. We…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-05-02 Galit Ashkenazi-Golan , Dominik Karos , Ehud Lehrer

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…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-12-02 Ross G. Pinsky

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

This paper explores a theory of generalization for learning problems on product distributions, complementing the existing learning theories in the sense that it does not rely on any complexity measures of the hypothesis classes. The main…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-07-28 Chenghao Guo , Zhiyi Huang , Zhihao Gavin Tang , Xinzhi Zhang

We study the problem of setting a price for a potential buyer with a valuation drawn from an unknown distribution $D$. The seller has "data"' about $D$ in the form of $m \ge 1$ i.i.d. samples, and the algorithmic challenge is to use these…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-02-12 Zhiyi Huang , Yishay Mansour , Tim Roughgarden

The n-way number partitioning problem, a fundamental challenge in combinatorial optimization, has significant implications for applications such as fair division and machine scheduling. Despite these problems being NP-hard, many…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-04-04 Samuel Bismuth , Erel Segal-Halevi , Dana Shapira

We study a class of Bayesian online selection problems with matroid constraints. Consider a vendor who has several items to sell, with the set of sold items being subject to some structural constraints, e.g., the set of sold items should be…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Ian DeHaan , Kanstantsin Pashkovich

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 question of existence and fast computation of fair and efficient allocations of indivisible resources among agents with additive valuations. As such allocations may not exist for arbitrary instances, we ask if they exist for…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-22 Aprup Kale , Rucha Kulkarni , Navya Garg

The sequential allocation protocol is a simple and popular mechanism to allocate indivisible goods, in which the agents take turns to pick the items according to a predefined sequence. While this protocol is not strategy-proof, it has been…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-11-27 Michele Flammini , Hugo Gilbert

The fundamental assignment problem is in search of welfare maximization mechanisms to allocate items to agents when the private preferences over indivisible items are provided by self-interested agents. The mainstream mechanism…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-06-04 Yansong Gao , Jie Zhang

We study a fair division problem with indivisible items, namely the computation of maximin share allocations. Given a set of $n$ players, the maximin share of a single player is the best she can guarantee to herself, if she would partition…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-05-16 Georgios Amanatidis , Georgios Birmpas , Evangelos Markakis

There are $n$ independent Bernoulli random variables with parameters $p_i$ that are observed sequentially. Two players, A and B, act in turns starting with player A. Each player has the possibility on his turn, when $I_k=1$, to choose…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-01-15 José María Grau Ribas