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A Full-Information Best-Choice Problem with Allowance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2009

Mitsushi Tamaki  and
J. George Shanthikumar
Mitsushi Tamaki
Affiliation:
Department of Business Administration, Aichi University, Nishikamo, Aichi, Japan, 470-02
J. George Shanthikumar
Affiliation:
School of Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720
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Abstract

This paper considers a variation of the classical full-information best-choice problem. The problem allows success to be obtained even when the best item is not selected, provided the item that is selected is within the allowance of the best item. Under certain regularity conditions on the allowance function, the general nature of the optimal strategy is given as well as an algorithm to determine it exactly. It is also examined how the success probability depends on the allowance function and the underlying distribution of the observed values of the items.

Type
Research Article
Information
Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 1996 , pp. 41 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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