Secretary problems as a source of benchmark bounds
Stephen M. Samuels · Lecture notes-monograph series · 1992
Secretary problems are those sequential selection problems in which the payoff (or cost) depends on the observations only through their ranks.A subclass of such problems allows only selection rules based on relative ranks.The performance of such rules provides readily accessible lower bounds for procedures based on more information.Included here are familiar bounds, like 1/e; well-known bounds, like 3.8695; and brand-new bounds, like 2.6003.