Related papers: The Secretary Problem with a Stochastic Precursor
In this paper, we discuss a stochastic decision problem of optimally selecting the order in which to try $n$ opportunities that may yield an uncertain reward in the future. The motivation came out from pure curiosity, after an informal…
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…
We consider the problem of scheduling in constrained queueing networks with a view to minimizing packet delay. Modern communication systems are becoming increasingly complex, and are required to handle multiple types of traffic with widely…
The Santa Claus problem is a fundamental problem in fair division: the goal is to partition a set of heterogeneous items among heterogeneous agents so as to maximize the minimum value of items received by any agent. In this paper, we study…
We consider a natural dynamic staffing problem in which a decision-maker sequentially hires workers over a finite horizon to meet an unknown demand revealed at the end. Predictions about demand arrive over time and become increasingly…
In submodular $k$-secretary problem, the goal is to select $k$ items in a randomly ordered input so as to maximize the expected value of a given monotone submodular function on the set of selected items. In this paper, we introduce a…
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 initiate the study of online routing problems with predictions, inspired by recent exciting results in the area of learning-augmented algorithms. A learning-augmented online algorithm which incorporates predictions in a black-box manner…
We study a twist on the classic secretary problem, which we term the secretary ranking problem: elements from an ordered set arrive in random order and instead of picking the maximum element, the algorithm is asked to assign a rank, or…
It has been found that stochastic algorithms often find good solutions much more rapidly than inherently-batch approaches. Indeed, a very useful rule of thumb is that often, when solving a machine learning problem, an iterative technique…
Online learning with expert advice is a fundamental problem of sequential prediction. In this problem, the algorithm has access to a set of $n$ "experts" who make predictions on each day. The goal on each day is to process these…
We consider ordinal online problems, i.e., tasks that only require pairwise comparisons between elements of the input. A classic example is the secretary problem and the game of googol, as well as its multiple combinatorial extensions such…
Most work on sequential learning assumes a fixed set of actions that are available all the time. However, in practice, actions can consist of picking subsets of readings from sensors that may break from time to time, road segments that can…
The Sliding Window Secretary Problem allows a window of choices to the Classical Secretary Problem, in which there is the option to choose the previous $K$ choices immediately prior to the current choice. We consider a case of this…
In time-critical settings such as assistive driving, assistants often rely on alerts or haptic signals to prompt rapid human attention, but these cues usually leave humans to interpret situations and decide responses independently,…
Algorithmic predictions are increasingly informing societal resource allocations by identifying individuals for targeting. Policymakers often build these systems with the assumption that by gathering more observations on individuals, they…
The game of best choice (or "secretary problem") is a model for making an irrevocable decision among a fixed number of candidate choices that are presented sequentially in random order, one at a time. Because the classically optimal…
We consider the problem of online interval scheduling on a single machine, where intervals arrive online in an order chosen by an adversary, and the algorithm must output a set of non-conflicting intervals. Traditionally in scheduling…
Motivated by the increasing popularity of learning and predicting human user behavior in communication and computing systems, in this paper, we investigate the fundamental benefit of predictive scheduling, i.e., predicting and pre-serving…
We study a continuous and infinite time horizon counterpart to the classic prophet inequality, which we term the stationary prophet inequality problem. Here, copies of a good arrive and perish according to Poisson point processes. Buyers…