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Related papers: Robust Gittins for Stochastic Scheduling

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Distributionally robust policy learning aims to find a policy that performs well under the worst-case distributional shift, and yet most existing methods for robust policy learning consider the worst-case joint distribution of the covariate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Jingyuan Wang , Zhimei Ren , Ruohan Zhan , Zhengyuan Zhou

We consider a natural generalization of classical scheduling problems in which using a time unit for processing a job causes some time-dependent cost which must be paid in addition to the standard scheduling cost. We study the scheduling…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-12-03 Lin Chen , Nicole Megow , Roman Rischke , Leen Stougie , José Verschae

One of the proposed solutions to the equilibrium selection problem for agents learning in repeated games is obtained via the notion of stochastic stability. Learning algorithms are perturbed so that the Markov chain underlying the learning…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-07-09 John Wicks , Amy Greenwald

Classical deterministic optimal control problems assume full information about the controlled process. The theory of control for general partially-observable processes is powerful, but the methods are computationally expensive and typically…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-08-02 Dongping Qi , Adam Dhillon , Alexander Vladimirsky

We study a sequential resource allocation problem involving a fixed number of recurring jobs. At each time-step the manager should distribute available resources among the jobs in order to maximise the expected number of completed jobs.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-06-17 Tor Lattimore , Koby Crammer , Csaba Szepesvári

We study an optimal control problem in which both the objective function and the dynamic constraint contain an uncertain parameter. Since the distribution of this uncertain parameter is not exactly known, the objective function is taken as…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-11-29 Jianxiong Ye , Lei Wang , Changzhi Wu , Jie Sun , Kok Lay Teo , Xiangyu Wang

We consider stochastic programs where the distribution of the uncertain parameters is only observable through a finite training dataset. Using the Wasserstein metric, we construct a ball in the space of (multivariate and non-discrete)…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-06-14 Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani , Daniel Kuhn

Time-varying stochastic optimization problems frequently arise in machine learning practice (e.g. gradual domain shift, object tracking, strategic classification). Although most problems are solved in discrete time, the underlying process…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-24 Subha Maity , Debarghya Mukherjee , Moulinath Banerjee , Yuekai Sun

We consider the Gittins index for a normal distribution with unknown mean $\theta$ and known variance where $\theta$ has a normal prior. In addition to presenting some monotonicity properties of the Gittins index, we derive an approximation…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2007-06-13 Yi-Ching Yao

This paper considers a distributed stochastic optimization problem where the goal is to minimize the time average of a cost function subject to a set of constraints on the time averages of a related stochastic processes called penalties. We…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2016-10-06 B. N. Bharath , Vaishali P

Multi-stage decision-making under uncertainty, where decisions are taken under sequentially revealing uncertain problem parameters, is often essential to faithfully model managerial problems. Given the significant computational challenges…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-30 Simon Thomä , Maximilian Schiffer , Wolfram Wiesemann

Assortment optimization is a fundamental challenge in modern retail and recommendation systems, where the goal is to select a subset of products that maximizes expected revenue under complex customer choice behaviors. While recent advances…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-11 Miao Lu , Yuxuan Han , Han Zhong , Zhengyuan Zhou , Jose Blanchet

Speed-robust scheduling is the following two-stage problem of scheduling $n$ jobs on $m$ uniformly related machines. In the first stage, the algorithm receives the value of $m$ and the processing times of $n$ jobs; it has to partition the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-07-17 Josef Minařík , Jiří Sgall

Distributionally robust optimization tackles out-of-sample issues like overfitting and distribution shifts by adopting an adversarial approach over a range of possible data distributions, known as the ambiguity set. To balance conservatism…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-02 Ahmad-Reza Ehyaei , Golnoosh Farnadi , Samira Samadi

A common goal in statistics and machine learning is to learn models that can perform well against distributional shifts, such as latent heterogeneous subpopulations, unknown covariate shifts, or unmodeled temporal effects. We develop and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-21 John Duchi , Hongseok Namkoong

In end-to-end distributed real time systems, a task may be executed sequentially on different processors. The end-toend task response time must not exceed the end-to-end task deadline to consider the task a schedulable task. In transient…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2013-06-04 W. El-Haweet , Islam Elgedawy , Ibrahim Abd El-Salam

In this paper we present a dynamic programing approach to stochastic optimal control problems with dynamic, time-consistent risk constraints. Constrained stochastic optimal control problems, which naturally arise when one has to consider…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-11-24 Yin-Lam Chow , Marco Pavone

Scheduling is a critical part of practical computer systems, and scheduling has also been extensively studied from a theoretical perspective. Unfortunately, there is a gap between theory and practice, as the optimal scheduling policies…

Performance · Computer Science 2021-10-25 Ziv Scully , Mor Harchol-Balter

We cast motion planning under uncertainty as a stochastic optimal control problem, where the optimal posterior distribution has an explicit form. To approximate this posterior, this work frames an optimization problem in the space of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Zinuo Chang , Hongzhe Yu , Patricio Vela , Yongxin Chen

We address the risk bounded trajectory optimization problem of stochastic nonlinear robotic systems. More precisely, we consider the motion planning problem in which the robot has stochastic nonlinear dynamics and uncertain initial…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Weiqiao Han , Ashkan Jasour , Brian Williams