School of Technology and Computer Science Seminars

Twenty Questions: Distributional Search Theory

by Yuval Filmus (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology)

Asia/Kolkata
A-201 (STCS Seminar Room)

A-201 (STCS Seminar Room)

Description
Abstract: I’m thinking of a person in the audience. How long will it take you to find whom, using only Yes/No questions? We consider this puzzle, which underlies search theory, with a twist: I’m choosing the person according to a known distribution, and your goal is to minimize the *expected* number of questions. How does the performance of your strategy depend on the type of question you’re allowed to ask? On the type of distribution I am allowed to choose? What happens if I can lie? Joint work with Yuval Dagan (MIT), Ariel Gabizon (Zcash), Daniel Kane (UCSD), Shay Moran (IAS).