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Collaborate with Strangers to Find Own Preferences

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Abstract

We consider a model with n players and m objects. Each player has a “preference vector” of length m, that models his grades for all objects. The grades are initially unknown to the players. A player can learn his grade for an object by probing that object, but performing a probe incurs cost. The goal of a player is to learn his preference vector with minimal cost, by adopting the results of probes performed by other players. To facilitate communication, we assume that players collaborate by posting their grades for objects on a shared billboard: reading from the billboard is free. We consider players whose preference vectors are popular, i.e., players whose preferences are common to many other players. We present a sequential and a parallel algorithm to solve the problem with logarithmic cost overhead.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

    Baruch Awerbuch

  2. School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Yossi Azar

  3. Dept. of Communication Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, 84105, Israel

    Zvi Lotker

  4. School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Boaz Patt-Shamir

  5. Intel Strategic CAD Lab, 77 Reed Road, Hudson, MA, 01749, USA

    Mark R. Tuttle

Authors
  1. Baruch Awerbuch
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  2. Yossi Azar
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  3. Zvi Lotker
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  4. Boaz Patt-Shamir
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  5. Mark R. Tuttle
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Baruch Awerbuch.

Additional information

An extended abstract of this work appeared in the 17th Ann. ACM Symp. on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architecture, Las Vegas, Nevada, July 2005.

Research of B. Awerbuch supported by NSF grant ANIR-0240551 and NSF grant CCR-0311795.

Research of Y. Azar supported in part by the German-Israeli Foundation and by the Israel Science Foundation.

Research of B. Patt-Shamir supported in part by Israel Ministry of Science and Technology and by the Israel Science Foundation.

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Awerbuch, B., Azar, Y., Lotker, Z. et al. Collaborate with Strangers to Find Own Preferences. Theory Comput Syst 42, 27–41 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00224-007-9016-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00224-007-9016-7

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