The Pandora's Box Problem, originally formalized by Weitzman in 1979, models selection from a set of options each with stochastic parameters, when evaluation (i.e. sampling) is costly. This includes, for example, the problem of hiring a skilled worker, ...

We study a large family of stochastic processes that update a limited amount in each step. One family of such examples is agent-based modeling, where one agent at a time updates, so the state has small changes in each step. A key question is how this ...