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arXiv · 1009.0626

Approximate results for a generalized secretary problem

Chris Dietz·Dinard van der Laan·Ad Ridder
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Abstract

A version of the classical secretary problem is studied, in which one is interested in selecting one of the b best out of a group of n differently ranked persons who are presented one by one in a random order. It is assumed that b is a preassigned (natural) number. It is known, already for a long time, that for the optimal policy one needs to compute b position thresholds, for instance via backwards induction. In this paper we study approximate policies, that use just a single or a double position threshold, albeit in conjunction with a level rank. We give exact and asymptotic (as n tends to infinity) results, which show that the double-level policy is an extremely accurate approximation.

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Chris Dietz, Dinard van der Laan, Ad Ridder. 2010-09-03. Approximate results for a generalized secretary problem. https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0626

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