Abstract
Pandora’s problem is a fundamental model that studies optimal search under costly inspection. In the classic version, there are n boxes, each associated with a known cost and a known distribution over values. A strategy inspects the boxes sequentially and obtains a utility that equals the difference between the maximum value of an inspected box and the total inspection cost. Weitzman (1979) presented a surprisingly simple strategy that obtains the optimal expected utility. In this work we introduce a new variant of Pandora’s problem in which every box is also associated with a publicly known deadline, indicating the final round by which its value may be chosen. This model captures many real-life scenarios where alternatives admit deadlines, such as candidate interviews and college admissions. Our main result is an efficient threshold-based strategy that achieves a constant approximation relative to the performance of the optimal strategy for the deadlines setting.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 20337-20343 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence |
Volume | 38 |
Issue number | 18 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 25 Mar 2024 |
Event | 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2024 - Vancouver, Canada Duration: 20 Feb 2024 → 27 Feb 2024 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Artificial Intelligence