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Ski Rental Problem

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Algorithms

  • 82 Accesses

Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

  • 1990; Karlin, Manasse, McGeogh, Owicki

Problem Definition

The ski rental problem was developed as a pedagogical tool for understanding the basic concepts in some early results in online algorithms. (In the interest of full disclosure, the earliest presentations of these results described the problem as the wedding-tuxedo-rental problem. Objections were presented that this was a gender-biased name for the problem, since while groomsmen can rent their wedding apparel, bridesmaids usually cannot. A further complication, owing to the difficulty of instantaneously producing fitted garments or ski equipment outlined below, suggests that some complications could have been avoided by focusing on the dilemma of choosing between daily lift passes or season passes, although this leads to the pricing complexities of purchasing season passes well in advance of the season, as opposed to the higher cost of purchasing them at the mountain during the ski...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Karlin AR, Manasse MS, Rudolph L, Sleator DD (1988) Competitive snoopy caching. Algorithmica 3:77–119 (Conference version: FOCS 1986, pp 244–254)

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  2. Karlin AR, Manasse MS, McGeoch LA, Owicki SS (1994) Competitive randomized algorithms for nonuniform problems. Algorithmica 11(6):542–571 (Conference version: SODA 1990, pp 301– 309)

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  3. Reingold N, Westbrook J, Sleator DD (1994) Randomized competitive algorithms for the list update problem. Algorithmica 11(1):15–32 (Conference version included author Irani S: SODA 1991, pp 251– 260)

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Mark S. Manasse

Authors
  1. Mark S. Manasse
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark S. Manasse .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Ming-Yang Kao

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Manasse, M.S. (2016). Ski Rental Problem. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_378

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