A new strategy for querying priced information

This paper focuses on competitive function evaluation in the context of computing with priced information. A function f is given together with a cost cx for each variable x of f. The cost cx has to be paid to read the value of x. The problem is to design algorithms that query the values of the variables sequentially in order to compute the function while trying to minimize the total cost incurred. Competitive analysis is employed to evaluate the performance of the algorithms. We describe a novel approach for devising efficient algorithms in this setting. We apply our approach to several classes of functions which have been studied in the literature of computing with priced information. In all cases considered, our approach provides algorithms that achieve better bounds than the best known algorithm for the same class of functions. More precisely, for the class of monotone boolean functions, we give a polynomial time algorithm with extremal competitiveness (k + l − p min{k, l}) where...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: STOC
• Authors: Ferdinando Cicalese, Eduardo Sany Laber
• Keywords: Algorithms, Cost Cx, Monotone Boolean Functions, Polynomial Time Algorithm, STOC 2005