In Chapter 1 the classical secretary problem is introduced. Chapters 2 and 3 are variations of this problem. Chapter 2, discusses the problem of maximizing the probability of stopping with one of the two highest values in a Bernoulli random walk with arbitrary parameter p and finite time horizon n. The optimal strategy (continue or stop) depends on a sequence of threshold values (critical probabilities) which has an oscillating pattern. Several properties of this sequence have been proved by Dr. Allaart. Further properties have been recently proved. In Chapter 3, a gambler will observe a finite sequence of continuous random variables. After he observes a value he must decide to stop or continue taking observations. He can play two different games A) Win at the maximum or B) Win within a proportion of the maximum. In the first section the sequence to be observed is independent. It is shown that for each n>1, theoptimal win probability in game A is bounded below by (1-1/n)^{n-1}. It is accomplished by reducing the problem to that of choosing the maximum of a special sequence of two-valued random variables and applying the sum-the-odds theorem of Bruss (2000). Secondly, it is assumed the sequence is i.i.d. The best lower bounds are provided for the winning probabilities in game B given any continuous distribution. These bounds are the optimal win probabilities of a game A which was examined by Gilbert and Mosteller (1966).

In this thesis, we study the power and limit of algorithms on various models, aiming at applications in distributed networks and databases. In distributed networks, graph algorithms are fundamental to many applications. We focus on computing random walks which are an important primitive employed in a wide range of applications but has always been computed naively. We show that a faster solution exists and subsequently develop faster algorithms by exploiting random walk properties leading to two immediate applications. We also show that this algorithm is optimal. Our technique in proving a lower bound show the first non-trivial connection between communication complexity and lower bounds of distributed graph algorithms. We show that this technique has a wide range of applications by proving new lower bounds of many problems. Some of these lower bounds show that the existing algorithms are tight. In database searching, we think of the database as a large set of multi-dimensional points stored in a disk and want to help the users to quickly find the most desired point. In this thesis, we develop an algorithm that is significantly faster than previous algorithms both theoretically and experimentally. The insight is to solve the problem on the streaming model which helps emphasize the benefits of sequential access over random disk access. We also introduced the randomization technique to the area. The results were complemented with a lower bound. We also initiat a new direction as an attempt to get a better query. We are the first to quantify the output quality using "user satisfaction" which is made possible by borrowing the idea of modeling users by utility functions from game theory and justify our approach through a geometric analysis.

The emerging research issues in evidence-based healthcare decision-making and explosion of comparative effectiveness research (CER) are evident proof of the effort to thoroughly incorporate the rich data currently available within the system. The flexibility of Bayesian data mining techniques lends its strength to handle the challenging issues in the biomedical and health care domains. My research focuses primarily on Bayesian data mining techniques for non-traditional data in this domain, which includes, 1. Missing data: Matched-pair studies with fixed marginal totals with application to meta-analysis of dental sealants effectiveness. 2. Data with unusual distribution: Modeling spatial repeated measures with excess zeros and no covariates to estimate U.S. county level natural fluoride concentration. 3. Highly irregular data: Assess overall image regularity in complex wavelet domain to classify mammography image. The goal of my research is to strengthen the link from data to decisions. By using Bayesian data mining techniques including signal and image processing (wavelet analysis), hierarchical Bayesian modeling, clinical trials meta-analyses and spatial statistics, this thesis resolves challenging issues of how to incorporate data to improve the systems of health care and bio fields and ultimately benefit public health.

Orientador: Élcio Lebensztayn / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matemática Estatística e Computação Científica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T03:09:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 UtriaValdes_JaimeAntonio_M.pdf: 525263 bytes, checksum: 3a980748a98761becf1b573639a361c1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: O Resumo poderá ser visualizado no texto completo da tese digital / Abstract: The Abstract is available with the full electronic digital document / Mestrado / Estatistica / Mestre em Estatística

Robbins' problem is an optimal stopping problem where one seeks to minimize the expected rank of their observations among all observations. We examine random walk analogs to Robbins' problem in both discrete and continuous time. In discrete time, we consider full information and relative ranks versions of this problem. For three step walks, we give the optimal stopping rule and the expected rank for both versions. We also give asymptotic upper bounds for the expected rank in discrete time. Finally, we give upper and lower bounds for the expected rank in continuous time, and we show that the expected rank in the continuous time problem is at least as large as the normalized asymptotic expected rank in the full information discrete time version.