Abstract
In this paper we consider a variation of the full-information secretary problem where the random variables to be observed are independent but not necessary identically distributed. The main result is a sharp lower bound for the optimal win probability. Precisely, if X1,...,Xn are independent random variables with known continuous distributions and Vn(X1,...,Xn):=supτℙ(Xτ=Mn), where Mn≔max{X1,...,Xn} and the supremum is over all stopping times adapted to X1,...,Xn then Vn(X1,...,Xn)≥(1-1/n)n-1, and this bound is attained. The method of proof consists in reducing the problem to that of a sequence of random variables taking at most two possible values, and then applying Bruss' sum-the-odds theorem, Bruss (2000). In order to obtain a sharp bound for each n, we improve Bruss' lower bound, Bruss (2003), for the sum-the-odds problem.
Citation
Pieter C. Allaart. José A. Islas. "A sharp lower bound for choosing the maximum of an independent sequence." J. Appl. Probab. 53 (4) 1041 - 1051, December 2016.
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