Title
How to whack moles
Abstract
In the classical whack-a-mole game moles that pop up at certain locations must be whacked by means of a hammer before they go under ground again. The goal is to maximize the number of moles whacked. This problem can be formulated as an online optimization problem: requests (moles) appear over time at points in a metric space and must be served (whacked) by a server (hammer) before their deadlines (i.e., before they disappear). An online algorithm learns each request only at its release time and must base its decisions on incomplete information. We study the online whack-a-mole problem (WHAM) on the real line and on the uniform metric space. While on the line no deterministic algorithm can achieve a constant competitive ratio, we provide competitive algorithms for the uniform metric space. Our online investigations are complemented by complexity results for the offline problem.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1016/j.tcs.2006.05.017
Theor. Comput. Sci.
Keywords
DocType
Volume
uniform metric space,constant competitive ratio,NP-hardness,Dynamic programming,competitive algorithm,classical whack-a-mole game mole,online algorithm,online investigation,metric space,Online algorithms,Competitive analysis,offline problem,online optimization problem,online whack-a-mole problem
Journal
361
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
Theoretical Computer Science
4
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.46
4
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sandra Gutiérrez140.46
Sven O. Krumke230836.62
nicole megow330226.73
Tjark Vredeveld423018.76