New Prophet Inequalities via Poissonization and Sharding

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1. Verfasser: Harb, Elfarouk
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Harb, Elfarouk
author_facet Harb, Elfarouk
contents This work introduces \emph{sharding} and \emph{Poissonization} as a unified framework for analyzing prophet inequalities. Sharding involves splitting a random variable into several independent random variables, shards, that collectively mimic the original variable's behavior. We combine this with Poissonization, where these shards are modeled using a Poisson distribution. Despite the simplicity of our framework, we improve the competitive ratio analysis of a dozen well studied prophet inequalities in the literature, some of which have been studied for decades. This includes the \textsc{Top-$1$-of-$k$} prophet inequality, prophet secretary inequality, and semi-online prophet inequality, among others. This approach not only refines the constants but also offers a more intuitive and streamlined analysis for many prophet inequalities in the literature. Furthermore, it simplifies proofs of several known results and may be of independent interest for other variants of the prophet inequality, such as order-selection.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_00971
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle New Prophet Inequalities via Poissonization and Sharding
Harb, Elfarouk
Data Structures and Algorithms
This work introduces \emph{sharding} and \emph{Poissonization} as a unified framework for analyzing prophet inequalities. Sharding involves splitting a random variable into several independent random variables, shards, that collectively mimic the original variable's behavior. We combine this with Poissonization, where these shards are modeled using a Poisson distribution. Despite the simplicity of our framework, we improve the competitive ratio analysis of a dozen well studied prophet inequalities in the literature, some of which have been studied for decades. This includes the \textsc{Top-$1$-of-$k$} prophet inequality, prophet secretary inequality, and semi-online prophet inequality, among others. This approach not only refines the constants but also offers a more intuitive and streamlined analysis for many prophet inequalities in the literature. Furthermore, it simplifies proofs of several known results and may be of independent interest for other variants of the prophet inequality, such as order-selection.
title New Prophet Inequalities via Poissonization and Sharding
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.00971