Secretary problem: graphs, matroids and greedoids

Abstract

In the paper the generalisation of the well known "secretary problem" is considered. The aim of the paper is to give a generalised model in such a way that the chosen set of the possible best $k$ elements have to be independent of all rejected elements. This condition is formulated using the theory of greedoids and in their special cases -- matroids and antimatroids. Examples of some special cases of greedoids (uniform, graphical matroids and binary trees) are considered.