Randomized Rounding Approaches to Online Allocation, Sequencing, and Matching

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Ma, Will
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Ma, Will
author_facet Ma, Will
contents Randomized rounding is a technique that was originally used to approximate hard offline discrete optimization problems from a mathematical programming relaxation. Since then it has also been used to approximately solve sequential stochastic optimization problems, overcoming the curse of dimensionality. To elaborate, one first writes a tractable linear programming relaxation that prescribes probabilities with which actions should be taken. Rounding then designs a (randomized) online policy that approximately preserves all of these probabilities, with the challenge being that the online policy faces hard constraints, whereas the prescribed probabilities only have to satisfy these constraints in expectation. Moreover, unlike classical randomized rounding for offline problems, the online policy's actions unfold sequentially over time, interspersed by uncontrollable stochastic realizations that affect the feasibility of future actions. This tutorial provides an introduction for using randomized rounding to design online policies, through four self-contained examples representing fundamental problems in the area: online contention resolution, stochastic probing, stochastic knapsack, and stochastic matching.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_20419
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Randomized Rounding Approaches to Online Allocation, Sequencing, and Matching
Ma, Will
Data Structures and Algorithms
Randomized rounding is a technique that was originally used to approximate hard offline discrete optimization problems from a mathematical programming relaxation. Since then it has also been used to approximately solve sequential stochastic optimization problems, overcoming the curse of dimensionality. To elaborate, one first writes a tractable linear programming relaxation that prescribes probabilities with which actions should be taken. Rounding then designs a (randomized) online policy that approximately preserves all of these probabilities, with the challenge being that the online policy faces hard constraints, whereas the prescribed probabilities only have to satisfy these constraints in expectation. Moreover, unlike classical randomized rounding for offline problems, the online policy's actions unfold sequentially over time, interspersed by uncontrollable stochastic realizations that affect the feasibility of future actions. This tutorial provides an introduction for using randomized rounding to design online policies, through four self-contained examples representing fundamental problems in the area: online contention resolution, stochastic probing, stochastic knapsack, and stochastic matching.
title Randomized Rounding Approaches to Online Allocation, Sequencing, and Matching
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.20419