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PAC Learning with Bandit Feedback: Sharp Sample Complexity in the Realizable Setting Algorithms with Polynomially-Improved Approximation Factors for the $2 \rightarrow q$ Norm, and Applications A computational phase transition for learning-to-sample from Ising models Covering vertices by sequential stars Fermi-Dirac machines as quantizations of neurons A Comprehensive Evaluation of Vertex Elimination Algorithms for Algorithmic Differentiation A Tight Bound on Localization of Electrical Flows Optimal Dimension-Free Sampling for Regularized Classification Reducing the Randomness in Partition Oracles for Bounded Degree Minor-Free Graphs Beyond the Half-Approximation: Fair and Efficient Online Class Matching Efficient Uniform Sampling of Surjections via their Profiles Tractable Maximization of Budgeted Phylogenetic Diversity on Networks Utilizing Node Scanwidth Fairness in Aggregation: Optimal Top-$k$ and Improved Full Ranking Learning-Augmented Online Scheduling with Parsimonious Preemption Entropy Equivalence Testing Lumberjack: Better Differentially Private Random Forests through Heavy Hitter Detection in Trees The Secretary Problem with a Stochastic Precursor Polynomial-Time Robust Multiclass Linear Classification under Gaussian Marginals Efficient Banzhaf-Based Data Valuation for $k$-Nearest Neighbors Classification Block-Sphere Vector Quantization An Approximation Algorithm for Graph Label Selection Iterative Chow Filtering for Learning with Distribution Shift Complexity of Non-Log-Concave Sampling in Fisher Information Stochastic Matching via Local Sparsification Finite Sample Bounds for Learning with Score Matching What is Learnable in Valiant's Theory of the Learnable? Provable Quantization with Randomized Hadamard Transform Min-Max Optimization Requires Exponentially Many Queries Fast and Compact Graph Cuts for the Boykov-Kolmogorov Algorithm A proximal gradient algorithm for composite log-concave sampling
Prophet Inequalities Require Only a Constant Number of Sa...
Andrés Cristi, Bruno Ziliotto · 2023-11-16 · via cs.DS updates on arXiv.org

In a prophet inequality problem, $n$ independent random variables are presented to a gambler one by one. The gambler decides when to stop the sequence and obtains the most recent value as reward. We evaluate a stopping rule by the worst-case ratio between its expected reward and the expectation of the maximum variable. In the classic setting, the order is fixed, and the optimal ratio is known to be 1/2. Three variants of this problem have been extensively studied: the prophet-secretary model, where variables arrive in uniformly random order; the free-order model, where the gambler chooses the arrival order; and the i.i.d. model, where the distributions are all the same, rendering the arrival order irrelevant. Most of the literature assumes that distributions are known to the gambler. Recent work has considered the question of what is achievable when the gambler has access only to a few samples per distribution. Surprisingly, in the fixed-order case, a single sample from each distribution is enough to approximate the optimal ratio, but this is not the case in any of the three variants. We provide a unified proof that for all three variants of the problem, a constant number of samples (independent of n) for each distribution is good enough to approximate the optimal ratios. Prior to our work, this was known to be the case only in the i.i.d. variant. We complement our result showing that our algorithms can be implemented in polynomial time. A key ingredient in our proof is an existential result based on a minimax argument, which states that there must exist an algorithm that attains the optimal ratio and does not rely on the knowledge of the upper tail of the distributions. A second key ingredient is a refined sample-based version of a decomposition of the instance into "small" and "large" variables, first introduced by Liu et al. [EC'21].