A GOLD-MINING PROBLEM: OPTIMAL BACKUP STRATEGY IN COMPUTER PROGRAMS

摘要

We study an example of R. Bellman' s gold-mining problem related to a program- ming job on the computer. The problem is formulated by dynamic programming and the optimal strategy is explicitly derived. The Bayesian version when the parameter involved is unknown is also solved by the same method. It is shown that the optimal strategy in each of two versions has the "no-island' (or, in other words, "control- limit") property.