Title : 
A Bayesian approach to stochastic root finding
         
        
            Author : 
Waeber, Rolf ; Frazier, Peter I. ; Henderson, Shane G.
         
        
            Author_Institution : 
Sch. of Oper. Res. & Inf. Eng., Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY, USA
         
        
        
        
        
        
            Abstract : 
A stylized model of one-dimensional stochastic root-finding involves repeatedly querying an oracle as to whether the root lies to the left or right of a given point x. The oracle answers this question, but the received answer is incorrect with probability 1 - p(x). A Bayesian-style algorithm for this problem that assumes knowledge of p(·) repeatedly updates a density giving, in some sense, one´s belief about the location of the root. We demonstrate how the algorithm works, and provide some results that shed light on its performance, both when p(·) is constant and when p(·) varies with x.
         
        
            Keywords : 
Bayes methods; stochastic processes; Bayesian approach; oracle querying; probability; stochastic root finding; Bayesian methods; Educational institutions;
         
        
        
        
            Conference_Titel : 
Simulation Conference (WSC), Proceedings of the 2011 Winter
         
        
            Conference_Location : 
Phoenix, AZ
         
        
        
            Print_ISBN : 
978-1-4577-2108-3
         
        
            Electronic_ISBN : 
0891-7736
         
        
        
            DOI : 
10.1109/WSC.2011.6148093