Asymptotically Optimal Learning for Parametric Prophet Inequalities

The single-selection prophet inequality is a canonical Bayesian online selection problem in which independent nonnegative values arrive sequentially and the decision-maker must irrevocably select at most one. Classical single-threshold guarantees are tight in the worst case, but the hard instances that prove tightness are highly irregular: the prophet's advantage is driven by rare, very large realizations of the maximum. We refine this worst-case picture by imposing a bound on the relative variance of the prophet's value, $\mathrm{Var}(\max_{i\in[n]}X_i)/\mathbb E[\max_{i\in[n]}X_i]^2$. This yields a nonparametric complexity measure that interpolates between deterministic instances, where the full prophet value can be recovered, and the unrestricted worst-case regime. Our main technical contribution is a general kernel method for single-threshold prophet inequalities. The method represents an instance by the quantile function of the maximum and rewrites the payoff of a threshold as a linear kernel functional of this quantile. This turns the worst-case analysis into an infinite-dimensional convex program, restores strong minimax duality in quantile space, and reduces the bounded-variance adversary's problem to a one-parameter variational family. Applying this framework, we obtain an exact characterization of the IID bounded-variance curve and asymptotically optimal finite-horizon thresholds, a closed-form expression for the fixed-order non-identical model, and a prophet-secretary lower-bound program together with a strict separation from the IID benchmark at every positive finite variance constraint. As a further application of the same kernel viewpoint, we derive an exact formula for IID random horizons under a convexity condition on the horizon pgf, which includes monotone-hazard-rate horizons, highlighting the broad applicability of this new technique for single threshold settings.

Stochastic optimization is a widely used approach for optimization under uncertainty, where uncertain input parameters are modeled by random variables. Exact or approximation algorithms have been obtained for several fundamental problems in this area. However, a significant limitation of this approach is that it requires full knowledge of the underlying probability distributions. Can we still get good (approximation) algorithms if these distributions are unknown, and the algorithm needs to learn them through repeated interactions? In this paper, we resolve this question for a large class of ''monotone'' stochastic problems, by providing a generic online learning algorithm with $\sqrt{T\log(T)}$ regret relative to the best approximation algorithm (under known distributions). Importantly, our online algorithm works in a semi-bandit setting, where in each period, the algorithm only observes samples from the random variables that were actually probed. Moreover, our result extends to settings with censored and binary feedback, where the policy only observes truncated or thresholded versions of the probed variables. Our framework applies to several fundamental problems such as prophet inequality, Pandora's box, stochastic knapsack, single-resource revenue management and sequential posted pricing.

Learning curves are a fundamental primitive in supervised learning, describing how an algorithm's performance improves with more data and providing a quantitative measure of its generalization ability. Formally, a learning curve plots the decay of an algorithm's error for a fixed underlying distribution as a function of the number of training samples. Prior work on revenue-maximizing learning algorithms, starting with the seminal work of Cole and Roughgarden [STOC, 2014], adopts a distribution-free perspective, which parallels the PAC learning framework in learning theory. This approach evaluates performance against the hardest possible sequence of valuation distributions, one for each sample size, effectively defining the upper envelope of learning curves over all possible distributions, thus leading to error bounds that do not capture the shape of the learning curves. In this work we initiate the study of learning curves for revenue maximization and provide a near-complete characterization of their rate of decay in the basic setting of a single item and a single buyer. In the absence of any restriction on the valuation distribution, we show that there exists a Bayes-consistent algorithm, meaning that its learning curve converges to zero for any arbitrary valuation distribution as the number of samples $n \to \infty$. However, this convergence must be arbitrarily slow, even if the optimal revenue is finite. In contrast, if the optimal revenue is achieved by a finite price, then the optimal rate of decay is roughly $1/\sqrt{n}$. Finally, for distributions supported on discrete sets of values, we show that learning curves decay almost exponentially fast, a rate unattainable under the PAC framework.