Related papers: Sum the Probabilities to $m$ and Stop
We study a signaling game between two firms competing to have their product chosen by a principal. The products have qualities drawn i.i.d. from a common prior. The principal aims to choose the better product, but the quality of a product…
We consider optimal stopping problems, in which a sequence of independent random variables is drawn from a known continuous density. The objective of such problems is to find a procedure which maximizes the expected reward; this is often…
Bayesian, classical, and extended maximum likelihood approaches to estimation of upper limits in experiments with small numbers of signal events are surveyed. The discussion covers only experiments whose outcomes are well described by a…
In multi-armed bandit problems, the typical goal is to identify the arm with the highest reward. This paper explores a threshold-based bandit problem, aiming to select an arm based on its relation to a prescribed threshold \(\tau \). We…
This paper considers a variation of the full-information secretary problem where the random variables to be observed are independent but not necessary identically distributed. The main result is a sharp lower bound for the optimal win…
We extend the Longstaff-Schwartz algorithm for approximately solving optimal stopping problems on high-dimensional state spaces. We reformulate the optimal stopping problem for Markov processes in discrete time as a generalized statistical…
A nonparametric variant of the Kiefer--Weiss problem is proposed and investigated. In analogy to the classical Kiefer--Weiss problem, the objective is to minimize the maximum expected sample size of a sequential test. However, instead of…
Wald's sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) is a cornerstone of sequential analysis. Based on desired type-I, II error levels $\alpha, \beta$, it stops when the likelihood ratio crosses certain thresholds, guaranteeing optimality of the…
We consider the thresholding bandit problem, whose goal is to find arms of mean rewards above a given threshold $\theta$, with a fixed budget of $T$ trials. We introduce LSA, a new, simple and anytime algorithm that aims to minimize the…
We consider the problem of determining feasible systems from a finite set of simulated alternatives with respect to probability constraints, where the observations from stochastic simulations are Bernoulli distributed. Most statistically…
The standard theory of optimal stopping is based on the idealised assumption that the underlying process is essentially known. In this paper, we drop this restriction and study data-driven optimal stopping for a general diffusion process,…
For a bucket test with a single criterion for success and a fixed number of samples or testing period, requiring a $p$-value less than a specified value of $\alpha$ for the success criterion produces statistical confidence at level $1 -…
Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) has proven to be efficient for recursive optimization. SPSA uses a centered difference approximation to the gradient based on two function evaluations regardless of the dimension of…
We give a complete characterization of the complexity of best-arm identification in one-parameter bandit problems. We prove a new, tight lower bound on the sample complexity. We propose the `Track-and-Stop' strategy, which we prove to be…
In the prophet secretary problem, $n$ values are drawn independently from known distributions, and presented in a uniformly random order. A decision-maker must accept or reject each value when it is presented, and may accept at most $k$…
We address online combinatorial optimization when the player has a prior over the adversary's sequence of losses. In this framework, Russo and Van Roy proposed an information-theoretic analysis of Thompson Sampling based on the information…
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…
The estimation of a probability p from repeated Bernoulli trials is considered in this paper. A sequential approach is followed, using a simple stopping rule. A closed-form expression and an upper bound are obtained for the mean absolute…
We investigate the problem of jointly testing multiple hypotheses and estimating a random parameter of the underlying distribution in a sequential setup. The aim is to jointly infer the true hypothesis and the true parameter while using on…
This article derives quantitative limit theorems for multivariate Poisson and Poisson process approximations. Employing the solution of Stein's equation for Poisson random variables, we obtain an explicit bound for the multivariate Poisson…