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Documents authored by Rodeh, Yoav

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Track C: Foundations of Networks and Multi-Agent Systems: Models, Algorithms and Information Management
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.146
Multi-Round Cooperative Search Games with Multiple Players

Authors: Amos Korman and Yoav Rodeh

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 132, 46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019)

Abstract
Assume that a treasure is placed in one of M boxes according to a known distribution and that k searchers are searching for it in parallel during T rounds. We study the question of how to incentivize selfish players so that group performance would be maximized. Here, this is measured by the success probability, namely, the probability that at least one player finds the treasure. We focus on congestion policies C(l) that specify the reward that a player receives if it is one of l players that (simultaneously) find the treasure for the first time. Our main technical contribution is proving that the exclusive policy, in which C(1)=1 and C(l)=0 for l>1, yields a price of anarchy of (1-(1-{1}/{k})^{k})^{-1}, and that this is the best possible price among all symmetric reward mechanisms. For this policy we also have an explicit description of a symmetric equilibrium, which is in some sense unique, and moreover enjoys the best success probability among all symmetric profiles. For general congestion policies, we show how to polynomially find, for any theta>0, a symmetric multiplicative (1+theta)(1+C(k))-equilibrium. Together with an appropriate reward policy, a central entity can suggest players to play a particular profile at equilibrium. As our main conceptual contribution, we advocate the use of symmetric equilibria for such purposes. Besides being fair, we argue that symmetric equilibria can also become highly robust to crashes of players. Indeed, in many cases, despite the fact that some small fraction of players crash (or refuse to participate), symmetric equilibria remain efficient in terms of their group performances and, at the same time, serve as approximate equilibria. We show that this principle holds for a class of games, which we call monotonously scalable games. This applies in particular to our search game, assuming the natural sharing policy, in which C(l)=1/l. For the exclusive policy, this general result does not hold, but we show that the symmetric equilibrium is nevertheless robust under mild assumptions.
Cite as

Amos Korman and Yoav Rodeh. Multi-Round Cooperative Search Games with Multiple Players. In 46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 132, pp. 146:1-146:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

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@InProceedings{korman_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.146,
  author =	{Korman, Amos and Rodeh, Yoav},
  title =	{{Multi-Round Cooperative Search Games with Multiple Players}},
  booktitle =	{46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019)},
  pages =	{146:1--146:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-109-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Baier, Christel and Chatzigiannakis, Ioannis and Flocchini, Paola and Leonardi, Stefano},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.146},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-107227},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.146},
  annote =	{Keywords: Algorithmic Mechanism Design, Parallel Algorithms, Collaborative Search, Fault-Tolerance, Price of Anarchy, Price of Stability, Symmetric Equilibria}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2018.54
Searching a Tree with Permanently Noisy Advice

Authors: Lucas Boczkowski, Amos Korman, and Yoav Rodeh

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 112, 26th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2018)

Abstract
We consider a search problem on trees using unreliable guiding instructions. Specifically, an agent starts a search at the root of a tree aiming to find a treasure hidden at one of the nodes by an adversary. Each visited node holds information, called advice, regarding the most promising neighbor to continue the search. However, the memory holding this information may be unreliable. Modeling this scenario, we focus on a probabilistic setting. That is, the advice at a node is a pointer to one of its neighbors. With probability q each node is faulty, independently of other nodes, in which case its advice points at an arbitrary neighbor, chosen uniformly at random. Otherwise, the node is sound and points at the correct neighbor. Crucially, the advice is permanent, in the sense that querying a node several times would yield the same answer. We evaluate efficiency by two measures: The move complexity denotes the expected number of edge traversals, and the query complexity denotes the expected number of queries. Let Delta denote the maximal degree. Roughly speaking, the main message of this paper is that a phase transition occurs when the noise parameter q is roughly 1/sqrt{Delta}. More precisely, we prove that above the threshold, every search algorithm has query complexity (and move complexity) which is both exponential in the depth d of the treasure and polynomial in the number of nodes n. Conversely, below the threshold, there exists an algorithm with move complexity O(d sqrt{Delta}), and an algorithm with query complexity O(sqrt{Delta}log Delta log^2 n). Moreover, for the case of regular trees, we obtain an algorithm with query complexity O(sqrt{Delta}log n log log n). For q that is below but close to the threshold, the bound for the move complexity is tight, and the bounds for the query complexity are not far from the lower bound of Omega(sqrt{Delta}log_Delta n). In addition, we also consider a semi-adversarial variant, in which an adversary chooses the direction of advice at faulty nodes. For this variant, the threshold for efficient moving algorithms happens when the noise parameter is roughly 1/Delta. Above this threshold a simple protocol that follows each advice with a fixed probability already achieves optimal move complexity.
Cite as

Lucas Boczkowski, Amos Korman, and Yoav Rodeh. Searching a Tree with Permanently Noisy Advice. In 26th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2018). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 112, pp. 54:1-54:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)

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@InProceedings{boczkowski_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2018.54,
  author =	{Boczkowski, Lucas and Korman, Amos and Rodeh, Yoav},
  title =	{{Searching a Tree with Permanently Noisy Advice}},
  booktitle =	{26th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2018)},
  pages =	{54:1--54:13},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-081-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{112},
  editor =	{Azar, Yossi and Bast, Hannah and Herman, Grzegorz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2018.54},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-95176},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2018.54},
  annote =	{Keywords: Data structures, Graph search, Average Case Analysis}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.81
The Dependent Doors Problem: An Investigation into Sequential Decisions without Feedback

Authors: Amos Korman and Yoav Rodeh

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 80, 44th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2017)

Abstract
We introduce the dependent doors problem as an abstraction for situations in which one must perform a sequence of possibly dependent decisions, without receiving feedback information on the effectiveness of previously made actions. Informally, the problem considers a set of d doors that are initially closed, and the aim is to open all of them as fast as possible. To open a door, the algorithm knocks on it and it might open or not according to some probability distribution. This distribution may depend on which other doors are currently open, as well as on which other doors were open during each of the previous knocks on that door. The algorithm aims to minimize the expected time until all doors open. Crucially, it must act at any time without knowing whether or which other doors have already opened. In this work, we focus on scenarios where dependencies between doors are both positively correlated and acyclic. The fundamental distribution of a door describes the probability it opens in the best of conditions (with respect to other doors being open or closed). We show that if in two configurations of d doors corresponding doors share the same fundamental distribution, then these configurations have the same optimal running time up to a universal constant, no matter what are the dependencies between doors and what are the distributions. We also identify algorithms that are optimal up to a universal constant factor. For the case in which all doors share the same fundamental distribution we additionally provide a simpler algorithm, and a formula to calculate its running time. We furthermore analyse the price of lacking feedback for several configurations governed by standard fundamental distributions. In particular, we show that the price is logarithmic in d for memoryless doors, but can potentially grow to be linear in d for other distributions. We then turn our attention to investigate precise bounds. Even for the case of two doors, identifying the optimal sequence is an intriguing combinatorial question. Here, we study the case of two cascading memoryless doors. That is, the first door opens on each knock independently with probability p_1. The second door can only open if the first door is open, in which case it will open on each knock independently with probability p_2. We solve this problem almost completely by identifying algorithms that are optimal up to an additive term of 1.
Cite as

Amos Korman and Yoav Rodeh. The Dependent Doors Problem: An Investigation into Sequential Decisions without Feedback. In 44th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 80, pp. 81:1-81:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{korman_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.81,
  author =	{Korman, Amos and Rodeh, Yoav},
  title =	{{The Dependent Doors Problem: An Investigation into Sequential Decisions without Feedback}},
  booktitle =	{44th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2017)},
  pages =	{81:1--81:13},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-041-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{80},
  editor =	{Chatzigiannakis, Ioannis and Indyk, Piotr and Kuhn, Fabian and Muscholl, Anca},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.81},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-73738},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.81},
  annote =	{Keywords: No Feedback, Sequential Decisions, Probabilistic Environment, Exploration and Exploitation, Golden Ratio}
}
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