Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1901.02552

Prophet Inequality with Correlated Arrival Probabilities, with Application to Two Sided Matchings

Van-Anh Truong·Xinshang Wang
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The classical Prophet Inequality arises from a fundamental problem in optimal-stopping theory. In this problem, a gambler sees a finite sequence of independent, non-negative random variables. If he stops the sequence at any time, he collects a reward equal to the most recent observation. The Prophet Inequality states that, knowing the distribution of each random variable, the gambler can achieve at least half as much reward in expectation, as a prophet who knows the entire sample path of random variables (Krengel and Sucheston 1978). In this paper, we prove a corresponding bound for correlated non-negative random variables. We analyze two methods for proving the bound, a constructive approach, which produces a worst-case instance, and a reductive approach, which characterizes a certain submartingale arising from the reward process of our online algorithm. We apply this new prophet inequality to the design of algorithms for a class of two-sided bipartite matching problems that underlie online task assignment problems. In these problems, demand units of various types arrive randomly and sequentially over time according to some stochastic process. Tasks, or supply units, arrive according to another stochastic process. Each demand unit must be irrevocably matched to a supply unit or rejected. The match earns a reward that depends on the pair. The objective is to maximize the total expected reward over the planning horizon. The problem arises in mobile crowd-sensing and crowd sourcing contexts, where workers and tasks must be matched by a platform according to various criteria. We derive the first online algorithms with worst-case performance guarantees for our class of two-sided bipartite matching problems.

Explore related subjects

math.OC

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Van-Anh Truong, Xinshang Wang. 2019-01-08. Prophet Inequality with Correlated Arrival Probabilities, with Application to Two Sided Matchings. https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.02552

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Genericity of Polyak-Lojasiewicz Inequalities for Entropic Mean-Field Neural ODEs

We address the behavior of idealized deep residual neural networks (ResNets), modeled via an optimal control problem set over continuity (or adjoint transport) equations. The continuity equations describe the statistical evolution of the features in the asymptotic regime where the layers of the network form a continuum. The velocity field is expressed through the network activation function, which is itself viewed as a function of the statistical distribution of the network parameters (weights and biases). From a mathematical standpoint, the control is interpreted in a relaxed sense, taking values in the space of probability measures over the set of parameters. We investigate the optimal behavior of the network when the cost functional arises from a regression problem and includes an additional entropic regularization term on the distribution of the parameters. In this framework, we focus in particular on the existence of stable optimizers --that is, optimizers at which the Hessian of the cost is non-degenerate. We show that, for an open and dense set of initial data, understood here as probability distributions over features and associated labels, there exists a unique stable global minimizer of the control problem. Moreover, we show that such minimizers satisfy a local Polyak--Lojasiewicz inequality, which can lead to exponential convergence of the corresponding gradient descent when the initialization lies sufficiently close to the optimal parameters. This result thus demonstrates the genericity (with respect to the distribution of features and labels) of the Polyak--Lojasiewicz condition in ResNets with a continuum of layers and under entropic penalization.

math.OC↗
arXiv2026

A regret minimization approach to fixed-point iterations

We propose a conversion scheme that turns regret minimizing algorithms into fixed point iterations, with convergence guarantees following from regret bounds. The resulting iterations can be seen as a grand extension of the classical Krasnoselskii--Mann iterations, as the latter are recovered by converting the Online Gradient Descent algorithm. This approach yields new simple iterations for finding fixed points of non-self operators. We also focus on converting algorithms from the AdaGrad family of regret minimizers, and thus obtain fixed point iterations with adaptive guarantees of a new kind. Numerical experiments on various problems demonstrate faster convergence of AdaGrad-based fixed point iterations over Krasnoselskii--Mann iterations.

math.OC↗
arXiv2026

Variational Analysis in Spectral Decomposition Systems

This work is concerned with the variational analysis of functions defined on Euclidean spaces whose values depend solely on certain invariants (``spectrum'') of their arguments, a class we term ``spectral functions.'' Building on our previous work \cite{PartI} on the convex analysis of such functions, we work in the abstract framework of spectral decomposition systems, which covers a wide range of previously studied settings, including eigenvalue decomposition of Hermitian matrices and singular value decomposition of rectangular matrices, and allows the derivation of new results in more general settings such as normal decomposition systems. The main results of this work provide constructive formulae for computing the regular, limiting, and Clarke subdifferentials of a spectral function in terms of the corresponding objects of the associated invariant function. Finally, we obtain a generalization of Lidski\uı's theorem on the spectrum of additive perturbations of Hermitian matrices to arbitrary spectral decomposition systems.

math.OC↗