Related papers: Matroid Secretary via Labeling Schemes
The well-known secretary problem in sequential analysis and optimal stopping theory asks one to maximize the probability of finding the optimal candidate in a sequentially examined list under the constraint that accept/reject decisions are…
We consider multiple-environment Markov decision processes (MEMDP), which consist of a finite set of MDPs over the same state space, representing different scenarios of transition structure and probability. The value of a strategy is the…
The secretary problem is probably the purest model of decision making under uncertainty. In this paper we ask which advice can we give the algorithm to improve its success probability? We propose a general model that unifies a broad range…
In \emph{Online Sorting}, an array of $n$ initially empty cells is given. At each time step $t$, an element $x_t \in [0,1]$ arrives and must be placed irrevocably into an empty cell without any knowledge of future arrivals. We aim to…
In \emph{Online Sorting}, an array of $n$ initially empty cells is given. At each time step $t$, an element $x_t \in [0,1]$ arrives and must be placed irrevocably into an empty cell without any knowledge of future arrivals. We aim to…
The classical analysis of online algorithms, due to its worst-case nature, can be quite pessimistic when the input instance at hand is far from worst-case. Often this is not an issue with machine learning approaches, which shine in…
Partially observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a standard model for agents making decisions in uncertain environments. Most work on POMDPs focuses on synthesizing strategies based on the available capabilities. However, system…
Online advertising has motivated interest in online selection problems. Displaying ads to the right users benefits both the platform (e.g., via pay-per-click) and the advertisers (by increasing their reach). In practice, not all users click…
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 consider the following Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation problem, which is closely related to several problems from the literature. A matroid $\mathcal{M}$ (in compact representation) on ground set $E$ is given, and each element…
Consider the following online version of the submodular maximization problem under a matroid constraint: We are given a set of elements over which a matroid is defined. The goal is to incrementally choose a subset that remains independent…
I provide a novel approach to characterizing the set of interim realizable allocations, in the spirit of Matthews (1984) and Border (1991). The approach allows me to identify precisely why exact characterizations are difficult to obtain in…
Many important problems in discrete optimization require maximization of a monotonic submodular function subject to matroid constraints. For these problems, a simple greedy algorithm is guaranteed to obtain near-optimal solutions. In this…
Candidates arrive sequentially for an interview process which results in them being ranked relative to their predecessors. Based on the ranks available at each time, one must develop a decision mechanism that selects or dismisses the…
The elements of a finite nonempty partially ordered set are exposed at independent uniform times in $[0,1]$ to a selector who, at any given time, can see the structure of the induced partial order on the exposed elements. The selector's…
In the Secretary Problem, one has to hire the best among n candidates. The candidates are interviewed, one at a time, at a random order, and one has to decide on the spot, whether to hire a candidate or continue interviewing. It is well…
The submodular maximization problem is widely applicable in many engineering problems where objectives exhibit diminishing returns. While this problem is known to be NP-hard for certain subclasses of objective functions, there is a greedy…
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…
The most well-known conjecture in the context of matroid secretary problems claims the existence of a constant-factor approximation applicable to any matroid. Whereas this conjecture remains open, modified forms of it were shown to be true,…
The secretary problem is one of the fundamental problems in online decision making; a tight competitive ratio for this problem of $1/\mathrm{e} \approx 0.368$ has been known since the 1960s. Much more recently, the study of algorithms with…