Related papers: The Bottleneck Birthday Problem
Learning with hidden variables is a central challenge in probabilistic graphical models that has important implications for many real-life problems. The classical approach is using the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. This…
A critical branching process $\left\{Z_{k},k=0,1,2,...\right\} $ in a random environment generated by a sequence of independent and identically distributed random reproduction laws is considered.\ Let $Z_{p,n}$ be the number of particles at…
Chv\'{a}tal and Klincsek (1980) gave an $O(n^3)$-time algorithm for the problem of finding a maximum-cardinality convex subset of an arbitrary given set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane. This paper examines a generalization of the problem,…
In this paper, we study the quantity of computational resources (state machine states and/or probabilistic transition precision) needed to solve specific problems in a single hop network where nodes communicate using only beeps. We begin by…
We propose an efficient algorithm for approximate computation of the profile maximum likelihood (PML), a variant of maximum likelihood maximizing the probability of observing a sufficient statistic rather than the empirical sample. The PML…
We present a new variant of the secretary problem. Let $A$ be a totally ordered set of $n$ \emph{applicants}. Given $P\subseteq A$ and $x\in A$, let $rr(P,x)=\vert\{z\in P \mid z\leq x\}\vert\mbox{ }$ be the \emph{relative rank of} $x$…
In this paper we study the strict majority bootstrap percolation process on graphs. Vertices may be active or passive. Initially, active vertices are chosen independently with probability p. Each passive vertex becomes active if at least…
In statistical mechanics, the generally called Stirling approximation is actually an approximation of Stirling's formula. In this article, it is shown that the term that is dropped is in fact the one that takes fluctuations into account.…
We propose a new approach for deriving probabilistic inequalities based on bounding likelihood ratios. We demonstrate that this approach is more general and powerful than the classical method frequently used for deriving concentration…
I present a single algorithm which solves the clique problems, "What is the largest size clique?", "What are all the maximal cliques?" and the decision problem, "Does a clique of size k exist?" for any given graph in polynomial time. The…
We are interested in bounding probabilities of rare events in the context of computer experiments. These rare events depend on the output of a physical model with random input variables. Since the model is only known through an expensive…
A problem dating back to Boole [Laws of Thought, Walton & Maberly,1854] is what can be computed about the probability of a finite union of events when given as input the probabilities of intersections of some of the events. The modern…
In this paper we consider the palindromes that can be formed by taking unordered sets of $n$ elements from an alphabet of $b$ letters. In particular, we seek to find the probability that given a random member of this space we are able to…
Finding the most powerful node in a dynamic random network, the largest set in a partition-valued stochastic process, or the largest family in an evolving population at a given time, can be a very difficult problem. This is particularly the…
The halting problem is undecidable --- but can it be solved for "most" inputs? This natural question was considered in a number of papers, in different settings. We revisit their results and show that most of them can be easily proven in a…
The problem we are considering is the following. A colorblind player is given a set $B = \{b_1,b_2,...,b_N\}$ of $N$ colored balls. He knows that each ball is colored either red or green, and that there are less green balls (this will be…
A family of sets is called $r$-\emph{cover free} if no set in the family is contained in the union of $r$ (or less) other sets in the family. A $1$-cover free family is simply an antichain with respect to set inclusion. Thus, Sperner's…
We investigate a class of chance-constrained combinatorial optimization problems. Given a pre-specified risk level $\epsilon \in [0,1]$, the chance-constrained program aims to find the minimum cost selection of a vector of binary decisions…
This paper mainly addresses the optimization of $p$-th moment of $\mathbb{R}^n$-valued random variable. Through an ingenious approximation mechanism, one transforms the maximization problem into a sequence of minimization problems, which…
The dynamics of a population exhibiting exponential growth can be modelled as a birth-death process, which naturally captures the stochastic variation in population size over time. In this article, we consider a supercritical birth-death…