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Related papers: Optimal Stopping with a Predicted Prior

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We study the classical problem of prediction with expert advice in the adversarial setting with a geometric stopping time. In 1965, Cover gave the optimal algorithm for the case of 2 experts. In this paper, we design the optimal algorithm,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-07-12 Nick Gravin , Yuval Peres , Balasubramanian Sivan

Online decision-makers often obtain predictions on future variables, such as arrivals, demands, inventories, and so on. These predictions can be generated from simple forecasting algorithms for univariate time-series, all the way to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-25 Lin An , Andrew A. Li , Benjamin Moseley , Gabriel Visotsky

This paper studies Makespan Minimization in the secretary model. Formally, jobs, specified by their processing times, are presented in a uniformly random order. An online algorithm has to assign each job permanently and irrevocably to one…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Susanne Albers , Maximilian Janke

We consider the classical online bipartite matching problem in the probe-commit model. In this problem, when an online vertex arrives, its edges must be probed to determine if they exist, based on known edge probabilities. A probing…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-12-16 Allan Borodin , Calum MacRury

We consider the secretary problem through the lens of learning-augmented algorithms. As it is known that the best possible expected competitive ratio is $1/e$ in the classic setting without predictions, a natural goal is to design…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Davin Choo , Chun Kai Ling

Iterative numerical algorithms are typically equipped with a stopping criterion, where the iteration process is terminated when some error or misfit measure is deemed to be below a given tolerance. This is a useful setting for comparing…

Numerical Analysis · Computer Science 2014-12-04 Uri Ascher , Farbod Roosta-Khorasani

In high-stakes applications, predictive models must not only produce accurate predictions but also quantify and communicate their uncertainty. Reject-option prediction addresses this by allowing the model to abstain when prediction…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Vojtech Franc , Jakub Paplham

Matching is one of the most fundamental and broadly applicable problems across many domains. In these diverse real-world applications, there is often a degree of uncertainty in the input which has led to the study of stochastic matching…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Brian Brubach , Nathaniel Grammel , Will Ma , Calum MacRury , Aravind Srinivasan

We introduce a variant of the classic prophet inequality, called \emph{residual prophet inequality} (RPI). In the RPI problem, we consider a finite sequence of $n$ nonnegative independent random values with known distributions, and a known…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-07-24 Jose Correa , Sebastian Perez-Salazar , Dana Pizarro , Bruno Ziliotto

We study a repeated Principal Agent problem between a long lived Principal and Agent pair in a prior free setting. In our setting, the sequence of realized states of nature may be adversarially chosen, the Agent is non-myopic, and the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-11-15 Natalie Collina , Aaron Roth , Han Shao

In this work we consider optimal stopping problems with conditional convex risk measures called optimised certainty equivalents. Without assuming any kind of time-consistency for the underlying family of risk measures, we derive a novel…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2014-12-16 Denis Belomestny , Volker Kraetschmer

We explore a prophet inequality problem, where the values of a sequence of items are drawn i.i.d. from some distribution, and an online decision maker must select one item irrevocably. We establish that $\mathrm{CR}_{\ell}$ the worst-case…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-01-13 Mathieu Molina , Nicolas Gast , Patrick Loiseau , Vianney Perchet

Sellers in online markets face the challenge of determining the right time to sell in view of uncertain future offers. Classical stopping theory assumes that sellers have full knowledge of the value distributions, and leverage this…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-06-30 Pieter Kleer , Johan van Leeuwaarden

In their seminal paper that initiated the field of algorithmic mechanism design, \citet{NR99} studied the problem of designing strategyproof mechanisms for scheduling jobs on unrelated machines aiming to minimize the makespan. They provided…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-12 Eric Balkanski , Vasilis Gkatzelis , Xizhi Tan

We study the secretary problem in which rank-ordered lists are generated by the Mallows model and the goal is to identify the highest-ranked candidate through a sequential interview process which does not allow rejected candidates to be…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-03-03 Xujun Liu , Olgica Milenkovic , George V. Moustakides

We study how a principal can jointly shape an agent's timing and action through information. We develop a revelation principle: with intertemporal commitment, the problem simplifies to choosing a joint distribution over stopping times and…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-11-26 Andrew Koh , Sivakorn Sanguanmoo , Weijie Zhong

Often the goal of model selection is to choose a model for future prediction, and it is natural to measure the accuracy of a future prediction by squared error loss. Under the Bayesian approach, it is commonly perceived that the optimal…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2007-06-13 Maria Maddalena Barbieri , James O. Berger

We study the problem of mechanism design for allocating a set of indivisible items among agents with private preferences on items. We are interested in such a mechanism that is strategyproof (where agents' best strategy is to report their…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-08-05 Ankang Sun , Bo Chen

We study a generalization of the secretary problem, where decisions do not have to be made immediately upon candidates' arrivals. After arriving, each candidate stays in the system for some (random) amount of time and then leaves, whereupon…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-09-20 Thomas Kesselheim , Alexandros Psomas , Shai Vardi

This paper introduces a heuristic framework for the Best Secretary Problem, where one item must be selected using rank information only. We develop five data-responsive rules extending classical fixed-cutoff methods: an expected-record…

Applications · Statistics 2025-11-14 Eugene Seong