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Related papers: Heuristic Solutions for the Best Secretary Problem

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In this paper, we investigate two variants of the secretary problem. In these variants, we are presented with a sequence of numbers $X_i$ that come from distributions $\mathcal{D}_i$, and that arrive in either random or adversarial order.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-08-22 Pranav Nuti , Jan Vondrák

The Rank Pricing Problem (RPP) is a challenging bilevel optimization problem with binary variables whose objective is to determine the optimal pricing strategy for a set of products to maximize the total benefit, given that customer…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-27 Asunción Jiménez-Cordero , Salvador Pineda , Juan Miguel Morales

This research considers the ranking and selection with input uncertainty. The objective is to maximize the posterior probability of correctly selecting the best alternative under a fixed simulation budget, where each alternative is measured…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-15 Hui Xiao , Zhihong Wei

In this paper we consider two variants of the Secretary problem: The Best-or-Worst and the Postdoc problems. We extend previous work by considering that the number of objects is not known and follows either a discrete Uniform distribution…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-11-13 L. Bayon , P. Fortuny , J. M. Grau , M. M Ruiz , M. A. Oller-Marcen

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-10-16 Hossein Esfandiari , MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Vahid Liaghat , Morteza Monemizadeh

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

Many sequential decision-making problems can be formulated as shortest-path problems, where the objective is to reach a goal state from a given starting state. Heuristic search is a standard approach for solving such problems, relying on a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-14 Gal Hadar , Forest Agostinelli , Shahaf S. Shperberg

Optimal stopping is the problem of deciding when to stop a stochastic system to obtain the greatest reward, arising in numerous application areas such as finance, healthcare and marketing. State-of-the-art methods for high-dimensional…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-01-01 Dragos Florin Ciocan , Velibor V. Mišić

Hierarchical classification offers an approach to incorporate the concept of mistake severity by leveraging a structured, labeled hierarchy. However, decoding in such settings frequently relies on heuristic decision rules, which may not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Roman Plaud , Alexandre Perez-Lebel , Matthieu Labeau , Antoine Saillenfest , Thomas Bonald

We propose a new methodology to develop heuristic algorithms using tree decompositions. Traditionally, such algorithms construct an optimal solution of the given problem instance through a dynamic programming approach. We modify this…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-10-26 Louis Carpentier , Jorik Jooken , Jan Goedgebeur

We provide a framework for accelerating reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms by heuristics constructed from domain knowledge or offline data. Tabula rasa RL algorithms require environment interactions or computation that scales with the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-23 Ching-An Cheng , Andrey Kolobov , Adith Swaminathan

The identification and ranking of impacted files within software reposi-tories is a key challenge in change impact analysis. Existing deterministic approaches that combine heuristic signals, semantic similarity measures, and graph-based…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Pradeep Kumar Sharma , Shantanu Godbole , Sarada Prasad Jena , Hritvik Shrivastava

We revisit the Stochastic Knapsack problem, where a policy-maker chooses an execution order for jobs with fixed values and stochastic running-times, aiming to maximize the value completed by a deadline. Dean et al. (FOCS'04) show that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Zohar Barak , Asnat Berlin , Ilan Reuven Cohen , Alon Eden , Omri Porat , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

Scoring rules elicit probabilistic predictions from a strategic agent by scoring the prediction against a ground truth state. A scoring rule is proper if, from the agent's perspective, reporting the true belief maximizes the expected score.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-07-09 Yuxuan Lu , Yifan Wu , Jason Hartline , Michael J. Curry

Current evaluation functions for heuristic planning are expensive to compute. In numerous planning problems these functions provide good guidance to the solution, so they are worth the expense. However, when evaluation functions are…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-01-17 Tomas De la Rosa , Sergio Jimenez , Raquel Fuentetaja , Daniel Borrajo

Fair algorithm evaluation is conditioned on the existence of high-quality benchmark datasets that are non-redundant and are representative of typical optimization scenarios. In this paper, we evaluate three heuristics for selecting diverse…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2022-04-26 Gjorgjina Cenikj , Ryan Dieter Lang , Andries Petrus Engelbrecht , Carola Doerr , Peter Korošec , Tome Eftimov

As a famous result, the ``37\% Law'' for Secretary Problem has widely influenced peoples' perception on online decision strategies about choice. However, using this strategy, too many attractive candidates may be rejected in the first 37\%,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-15 Zishuo Zhao

This paper develops a framework for the design of scoring rules to optimally incentivize an agent to exert a multi-dimensional effort. This framework is a generalization to strategic agents of the classical knapsack problem (cf. Briest,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-03 Jason D. Hartline , Liren Shan , Yingkai Li , Yifan Wu

We consider a settings of hierarchical reinforcement learning, in which the reward is a sum of components. For each component we are given a policy that maximizes it and our goal is to assemble a policy from the individual policies that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-06 Tom Zahavy , Avinatan Hasidim , Haim Kaplan , Yishay Mansour

We consider generalizations of the classical secretary problem, also known as the problem of optimal choice, to posets where the only information we have is the size of the poset and the number of maximal elements. We show that, given this…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-06-29 Bryn Garrod , Robert Morris