Related papers: IID Prophet Inequality with Random Horizon: Going …
Prophet inequalities are performance guarantees for online algorithms (a.k.a. stopping rules) solving the following "hiring problem": a decision maker sequentially inspects candidates whose values are independent random numbers and is asked…
Prophet inequalities compare online stopping strategies against an omniscient "prophet" using distributional knowledge. In this work, we augment this model with a conservative prediction of the maximum realized value. We quantify the…
We study the prophet inequality, a fundamental problem in online decision-making and optimal stopping, in a practical setting where rewards are observed only through noisy realizations and reward distributions are unknown. At each stage,…
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 study the i.i.d. $k$-selection prophet inequality problem, where a decision-maker sequentially observes $n$ independent nonnegative rewards and may accept at most $k$ of them without knowledge of future realizations. The objective is to…
In this work we initiate the study of buy-and-sell prophet inequalities. We start by considering what is arguably the most fundamental setting. In this setting the online algorithm observes a sequence of prices one after the other. At each…
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 modern sample-driven Prophet Inequality, an adversary chooses a sequence of $n$ items with values $v_1, v_2, \ldots, v_n$ to be presented to a decision maker (DM). The process follows in two phases. In the first phase (sampling phase),…
The I.I.D. Prophet Inequality is a fundamental problem where, given $n$ independent random variables $X_1,\dots,X_n$ drawn from a known distribution $\mathcal{D}$, one has to decide at every step $i$ whether to stop and accept $X_i$ or…
In the classical prophet inequality settings, a gambler is given a sequence of $n$ random variables $X_1, \dots, X_n$, taken from known distributions, observes their values in this (potentially adversarial) order, and select one of them,…
We study a variant of the single-choice prophet inequality problem where the decision-maker does not know the underlying distribution and has only access to a set of samples from the distributions. Rubinstein et al. [2020] showed that the…
The secretary problem or the game of Googol are classic models for online selection problems that have received significant attention in the last five decades. We consider a variant of the problem and explore its connections to data-driven…
We study a continuous and infinite time horizon counterpart to the classic prophet inequality, which we term the stationary prophet inequality problem. Here, copies of a good arrive and perish according to Poisson point processes. Buyers…
Prophet inequalities are a cornerstone in optimal stopping and online decision-making. Traditionally, they involve the sequential observation of $n$ non-negative independent random variables and face irrevocable accept-or-reject choices.…
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…
We introduce a model of competing agents in a prophet setting, where rewards arrive online, and decisions are made immediately and irrevocably. The rewards are unknown from the outset, but they are drawn from a known probability…
We study the single-choice Prophet Inequality problem when the gambler is given access to samples. We show that the optimal competitive ratio of $1/2$ can be achieved with a single sample from each distribution. When the distributions are…
Many online problems are studied in stochastic settings for which inputs are samples from a known distribution, given in advance, or from an unknown distribution. Such distributions model both beyond-worst-case inputs and, when given,…
Hill and Kertz studied the prophet inequality on iid distributions [The Annals of Probability 1982]. They proved a theoretical bound of $1-\frac{1}{e}$ on the approximation factor of their algorithm. They conjectured that the best…