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Maximum Selection and Ranking under Noisy Comparisons
Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 70:1088-1096, 2017.
Abstract
We consider (ϵ,δ)-PAC maximum-selection and ranking using pairwise comparisons for general probabilistic models whose comparison probabilities satisfy strong stochastic transitivity and stochastic triangle inequality. Modifying the popular knockout tournament, we propose a simple maximum-selection algorithm that uses O(nϵ2(1+log1δ)) comparisons, optimal up to a constant factor. We then derive a general framework that uses noisy binary search to speed up many ranking algorithms, and combine it with merge sort to obtain a ranking algorithm that uses O(nϵ2logn(loglogn)3) comparisons for δ=1n, optimal up to a (loglogn)3 factor.