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Beyond matroids: secretary problem and prophet inequality with general constraints

Published: 19 June 2016 Publication History

Abstract

We study generalizations of the ``Prophet Inequality'' and ``Secretary Problem'', where the algorithm is restricted to an arbitrary downward-closed set system. For 0,1 values, we give O(n)-competitive algorithms for both problems. This is close to the Omega(n/log n) lower bound due to Babaioff, Immorlica, and Kleinberg. For general values, our results translate to O(log(n) log(r))-competitive algorithms, where r is the cardinality of the largest feasible set. This resolves (up to the O(loglog(n) log(r)) factor) an open question posed to us by Bobby Kleinberg.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    STOC '16: Proceedings of the forty-eighth annual ACM symposium on Theory of Computing
    June 2016
    1141 pages
    ISBN:9781450341325
    DOI:10.1145/2897518
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    Published: 19 June 2016

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    1. Prophet Inequality
    2. Secretary Problem

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    June 19 - 21, 2016
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    • (2024)Supermodular Approximation of Norms and ApplicationsProceedings of the 56th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing10.1145/3618260.3649734(1841-1852)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2024
    • (2024)On submodular prophet inequalities and correlation gapTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2024.1148141019:COnline publication date: 1-Dec-2024
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