Graphic Matroid Secretary without the Graph

Paul Dütting; Renato Paes Leme; Martin Pál; Neel Patel

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arXiv · 2608.11413

Graphic Matroid Secretary without the Graph

Paul Dütting·Renato Paes Leme·Martin Pál·Neel Patel

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Abstract

The matroid secretary problem (MSP) is one of the cleanest, and most captivating open problems in online algorithms. The famous MSP conjecture stipulates that there exists a constant-competitive algorithm, yet to date the best known algorithms are $O(\log \log (\text{rank}))$ competitive. It is widely believed that all information that an algorithm for the MSP should use is information that is available through an independence oracle on the already arrived elements. Despite this, there are natural classes of matroids where a constant-competitive algorithm is known if we are given additional upfront information about the matroid; while no such algorithm is known if all the algorithm can use is an independence oracle on the arrived elements. In this work, we tackle the perhaps most appealing such class of matroids, graphic matroids. We develop an algorithm for the MSP that has access to the independence oracle only. Our algorithm runs in polynomial time, and if the underlying matroid is graphic, it produces an independent set whose weight is at least $1/36$ of the maximum-weight independent set. Ours is the first constant-competitive algorithm for MSP on unknown graphic matroids.

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Paul Dütting, Renato Paes Leme, Martin Pál, Neel Patel. 2026-08-11. Graphic Matroid Secretary without the Graph. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11413

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