Related papers: The Most Malicious Ma\^{i}tre D'
Moving target defense (MTD) is a proactive defense approach that aims to thwart attacks by continuously changing the attack surface of a system (e.g., changing host or network configurations), thereby increasing the adversary's uncertainty…
We consider a random walk in a truncated cone $K_N$, which is obtained by slicing cone $K$ by a hyperplane at a growing level of order $N$. We study the behaviour of the Green function in this truncated cone as $N$ increases. Using these…
The main objective of this paper is to develop a martingale-type solution to optimal consumption--investment choice problems ([Merton, 1969] and [Merton, 1971]) under time-varying incomplete preferences driven by externalities such as…
As an alternative to PINNs, a Deep Ritz framework is proposed to solve fully nonlinear PDEs. A least-squares algorithm is advocated to decouple the nonlinearities from the variational features of several fully nonlinear PDEs. A splitting…
In a multi-armed bandit problem, an online algorithm chooses from a set of strategies in a sequence of trials so as to maximize the total payoff of the chosen strategies. While the performance of bandit algorithms with a small finite…
We revisit a version of the classic occupancy scheme, where balls are thrown until almost all boxes receive a given number of balls. Special cases are widely known as coupon-collectors and dixie cup problems. We show that as the number of…
We identify and document a new principle of economic behavior: the principle of the Malevolent Hiding Hand. In a famous discussion, Albert Hirschman celebrated the Hiding Hand, which he saw as a benevolent mechanism by which unrealistically…
The deferred acceptance algorithm is an elegant solution to the stable matching problem that guarantees optimality and truthfulness for one side of the market. Despite these desirable guarantees, it is susceptible to strategic misreporting…
In this expository article, we discuss the rank-derangement problem, which asks for the number of permutations of a deck of cards such that each card is replaced by a card of a different rank. This combinatorial problem arises in computing…
In the classical multi-armed bandit problem, d arms are available to the decision maker who pulls them sequentially in order to maximize his cumulative reward. Guarantees can be obtained on a relative quantity called regret, which scales…
We consider the distributed version of the Multiple Knapsack Problem (MKP), where $m$ items are to be distributed amongst $n$ processors, each with a knapsack. We propose different distributed approximation algorithms with a tradeoff…
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…
This paper studies the problem of mapping optimization in decentralized control problems. A global optimization algorithm is proposed based on the ideas of ``deterministic annealing" - a powerful non-convex optimization framework derived…
The game of best choice (or "secretary problem") is a model for making an irrevocable decision among a fixed number of candidate choices that are presented sequentially in random order, one at a time. Because the classically optimal…
We study a mechanism-design problem in which spiteful agents strive to not only maximize their rewards but also, contingent upon their own payoff levels, seek to lower the opponents' rewards. We characterize all individually rational (IR)…
The Plurality problem - introduced by Aigner \cite{A2004} - has many variants. In this article we deal with the following version: suppose we are given $n$ balls, each of them colored by one of three colors. A \textit{plurality ball} is one…
This paper studies the numerical approximation of solution of the Dirichlet problem for the fully nonlinear Monge-Ampere equation. In this approach, we take the advantage of reformulation the Monge-Ampere problem as an optimization problem,…
Weitzman (1979) introduced the Pandora Box problem as a model for sequential search with inspection costs, and gave an elegant index-based policy that attains provably optimal expected payoff. In various scenarios, the searching agent may…
Sphere packings in high dimensions interest mathematicians and physicists and have direct applications in communications theory. Remarkably, no one has been able to provide exponential improvement on a 100-year-old lower bound on the…
In this work, we consider the $k$-Canadian Traveller Problem ($k$-CTP) under the learning-augmented framework proposed by Lykouris & Vassilvitskii. $k$-CTP is a generalization of the shortest path problem, and involves a traveller who knows…