English

Difference prophet inequalities for [0,1]-valued i.i.d. random variables with cost for observations

Probability 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

Let X_1,X_2,... be a sequence of [0,1]-valued i.i.d. random variables, let c\geq 0 be a sampling cost for each observation and let Y_i=X_i-ic, i=1,2,.... For n=1,2,..., let M(Y_1,...,Y_n)=E(max_{1\leq i\leq n}Y_i) and V(Y_1,...,Y_n)=sup_{\tau \in C^n}E(Y_{\tau}), where C^n denotes the set of all stopping rules for Y_1,...,Y_n. Sharp upper bounds for the difference M(Y_1,...,Y_n)-V(Y_1,...,Y_n) are given under various restrictions on c and n.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0503589,
  title  = {Difference prophet inequalities for [0,1]-valued i.i.d. random variables with cost for observations},
  author = {Holger Kosters},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0503589},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117904000000496 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org)

R2 v1 2026-07-22T17:17:20.685Z