Pandora with Inaccurate Priors
Data Structures and Algorithms
2025-02-07 v1
Abstract
We investigate the role of inaccurate priors for the classical Pandora's box problem. In the classical Pandora's box problem we are given a set of boxes each with a known cost and an unknown value sampled from a known distribution. We investigate how inaccuracies in the beliefs can affect existing algorithms. Specifically, we assume that the knowledge of the underlying distribution has a small error in the Kolmogorov distance, and study how this affects the utility obtained by the optimal algorithm.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.03574,
title = {Pandora with Inaccurate Priors},
author = {Kiarash Banihashem and Xiang Chen and MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi and Sungchul Kim and Kanak Mahadik and Ryan Rossi and Tong Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.03574},
year = {2025}
}