This coherent anthology presents the state of the art in the booming area of online algorithms and competitive analysis of such algorithms. The 17 papers are carefully revised and thoroughly improved versions of presentations given first during a Dagstuhl seminar in 1996. An overview by the volume editors introduces the area to the reader. The technical chapters are devoted to foundational and methodological issues for the design and analysis of various classes of online algorithms as well as to the detailed evaluation of algorithms for various activities in online processing, ranging from load balancing and scheduling to networking and financial problems. An outlook by the volume editors and a bibliography listing more than 750 references complete the work. The book is ideally suited for advanced courses and self-study in online algorithms. It is indispensable reading for researchers and professionals active in the area.

Contains theoretical foundations, applications, and examples of competitive analysis for online algorithms.

This textbook provides a rigorous introduction to online algorithms for graduate and senior undergraduate students. In-depth coverage of most of the important topics is presented with special emphasis on elegant analysis. A wide range of solved examples and practice exercises are included, allowing hands-on exposure to the basic concepts.

Acknowledgments -- Introduction: the power of algorithms -- A society, searching -- Searching for Black girls -- Searching for people and communities -- Searching for protections from search engines -- The future of knowledge in the public -- The future of information culture -- Conclusion: algorithms of oppression -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the author

With the aim to sequentially determine optimal allocations across a set of assets, Online Portfolio Selection (OLPS) has significantly reshaped the financial investment landscape. Online Portfolio Selection: Principles and Algorithms supplies a comprehensive survey of existing OLPS principles and presents a collection of innovative strategies that leverage machine learning techniques for financial investment. The book presents four new algorithms based on machine learning techniques that were designed by the authors, as well as a new back-test system they developed for evaluating trading strategy effectiveness. The book uses simulations with real market data to illustrate the trading strategies in action and to provide readers with the confidence to deploy the strategies themselves. The book is presented in five sections that: Introduce OLPS and formulate OLPS as a sequential decision task Present key OLPS principles, including benchmarks, follow the winner, follow the loser, pattern matching, and meta-learning Detail four innovative OLPS algorithms based on cutting-edge machine learning techniques Provide a toolbox for evaluating the OLPS algorithms and present empirical studies comparing the proposed algorithms with the state of the art Investigate possible future directions Complete with a back-test system that uses historical data to evaluate the performance of trading strategies, as well as MATLAB® code for the back-test systems, this book is an ideal resource for graduate students in finance, computer science, and statistics. It is also suitable for researchers and engineers interested in computational investment. Readers are encouraged to visit the authors’ website for updates: http://olps.stevenhoi.org.

Algorithms are the lifeblood of computer science. They are the machines that proofs build and the music that programs play. Their history is as old as mathematics itself. This textbook is a wide-ranging, idiosyncratic treatise on the design and analysis of algorithms, covering several fundamental techniques, with an emphasis on intuition and the problem-solving process. The book includes important classical examples, hundreds of battle-tested exercises, far too many historical digressions, and exaclty four typos. Jeff Erickson is a computer science professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; this book is based on algorithms classes he has taught there since 1998.

A broad introduction to algorithms for decision making under uncertainty, introducing the underlying mathematical problem formulations and the algorithms for solving them. Automated decision-making systems or decision-support systems—used in applications that range from aircraft collision avoidance to breast cancer screening—must be designed to account for various sources of uncertainty while carefully balancing multiple objectives. This textbook provides a broad introduction to algorithms for decision making under uncertainty, covering the underlying mathematical problem formulations and the algorithms for solving them. The book first addresses the problem of reasoning about uncertainty and objectives in simple decisions at a single point in time, and then turns to sequential decision problems in stochastic environments where the outcomes of our actions are uncertain. It goes on to address model uncertainty, when we do not start with a known model and must learn how to act through interaction with the environment; state uncertainty, in which we do not know the current state of the environment due to imperfect perceptual information; and decision contexts involving multiple agents. The book focuses primarily on planning and reinforcement learning, although some of the techniques presented draw on elements of supervised learning and optimization. Algorithms are implemented in the Julia programming language. Figures, examples, and exercises convey the intuition behind the various approaches presented.

The latest edition of the essential text and professional reference, with substantial new material on such topics as vEB trees, multithreaded algorithms, dynamic programming, and edge-based flow. Some books on algorithms are rigorous but incomplete; others cover masses of material but lack rigor. Introduction to Algorithms uniquely combines rigor and comprehensiveness. The book covers a broad range of algorithms in depth, yet makes their design and analysis accessible to all levels of readers. Each chapter is relatively self-contained and can be used as a unit of study. The algorithms are described in English and in a pseudocode designed to be readable by anyone who has done a little programming. The explanations have been kept elementary without sacrificing depth of coverage or mathematical rigor. The first edition became a widely used text in universities worldwide as well as the standard reference for professionals. The second edition featured new chapters on the role of algorithms, probabilistic analysis and randomized algorithms, and linear programming. The third edition has been revised and updated throughout. It includes two completely new chapters, on van Emde Boas trees and multithreaded algorithms, substantial additions to the chapter on recurrence (now called “Divide-and-Conquer”), and an appendix on matrices. It features improved treatment of dynamic programming and greedy algorithms and a new notion of edge-based flow in the material on flow networks. Many exercises and problems have been added for this edition. The international paperback edition is no longer available; the hardcover is available worldwide.

Introduces machine learning and its algorithmic paradigms, explaining the principles behind automated learning approaches and the considerations underlying their usage.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed workshop post-proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Approximation and Online Algorithms, WAOA 2019, held in Munich, Germany, in September 2019 as part of ALGO 2019. The 16 revised full papers presented together with one invited paper in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. Topics of interest for WAOA 2018 were: graph algorithms; inapproximability results; network design; packing and covering; paradigms for the design and analysis of approximation and online algorithms; parameterized complexity; scheduling problems; algorithmic game theory; algorithmic trading; coloring and partitioning; competitive analysis; computational advertising; computational finance; cuts and connectivity; geometric problems; mechanism design; resource augmentation; and real-world applications.