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SUMMARY:A More General Pandora Rule? - Richard Weber (University of Cambri
 dge)
DTSTART:20140211T140000Z
DTEND:20140211T150000Z
UID:TALK49575@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Felix Fischer
DESCRIPTION:In a problem described by the economist Martin Weitzman in 197
 9 an agent is presented with boxes containing prizes. She may open boxes i
 n any order\, discovering prizes within\, and optimally stop. She wishes t
 o maximize the expected value of the greatest prize found\, minus costs of
  opening boxes. The problem has an attractive solution by means of a so-ca
 lled Pandora rule\, and has applications to searching for a house or job. 
  However\, it does not address the problem of a student who searches for t
 he subject to choose as her major and benefits from the courses she takes 
 while searching.\n \nSo motivated\, we ask whether there are any problems 
 for which a Pandora rule is optimal when the utility is a more general fun
 ction of all the discovered prizes. We explain how the Gittin index theore
 m can be used to solve one version of the student's problem. This is not t
 he full story\, since we can also describe some problems which are not of 
 multi-armed bandit type and yet for which a Pandora rule is optimal.  (Joi
 nt work with  Wojciech Olszewski\, Dept Economics\, Northwestern Universit
 y.)
LOCATION:MR15\, Centre for Mathematical Sciences\, Wilberforce Road\, Camb
 ridge
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