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We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with the graph-based feedback structure introduced by Mannor and Shamir. We analyze the performance of the two most prominent stochastic bandit algorithms, Thompson Sampling and Upper…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-17 Thodoris Lykouris , Eva Tardos , Drishti Wali

We study the stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem under worst-case regret and heavy-tailed reward distribution. We modify the minimax policy MOSS for the sub-Gaussian reward distribution by using saturated empirical mean to design a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-11-19 Lai Wei , Vaibhav Srivastava

Stochastic Rank-One Bandits (Katarya et al, (2017a,b)) are a simple framework for regret minimization problems over rank-one matrices of arms. The initially proposed algorithms are proved to have logarithmic regret, but do not match the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-12-09 Cindy Trinh , Emilie Kaufmann , Claire Vernade , Richard Combes

In the regret-based formulation of Multi-armed Bandit (MAB) problems, except in rare instances, much of the literature focuses on arms with i.i.d. rewards. In this paper, we consider the problem of obtaining regret guarantees for MAB…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-11 Arghyadip Roy , Sanjay Shakkottai , R. Srikant

We present ML-UCB, a generalized upper confidence bound algorithm that integrates arbitrary machine learning models into multi-armed bandit frameworks. A fundamental challenge in deploying sophisticated ML models for sequential…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-07 Yajing Liu , Erkao Bao , Linqi Song

In this paper, we study the behavior of the Upper Confidence Bound-Variance (UCB-V) algorithm for the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problems, a variant of the canonical Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithm that incorporates variance estimates…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-18 Yingying Fan , Yuxuan Han , Jinchi Lv , Xiaocong Xu , Zhengyuan Zhou

We consider the classic online learning and stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems, when at each step, the online policy can probe and find out which of a small number ($k$) of choices has better reward (or loss) before making its…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-11-08 Aditya Bhaskara , Sreenivas Gollapudi , Sungjin Im , Kostas Kollias , Kamesh Munagala

We introduce in this paper a new algorithm for Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problems. A machine learning paradigm popular within Cognitive Network related topics (e.g., Spectrum Sensing and Allocation). We focus on the case where the rewards…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-04-10 Wassim Jouini , Christophe Moy

We consider stochastic multi-armed bandits where the expected reward is a unimodal function over partially ordered arms. This important class of problems has been recently investigated in (Cope 2009, Yu 2011). The set of arms is either…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-05-21 Richard Combes , Alexandre Proutiere

We consider the combinatorial bandits problem, where at each time step, the online learner selects a size-$k$ subset $s$ from the arms set $\mathcal{A}$, where $\left|\mathcal{A}\right| = n$, and observes a stochastic reward of each arm in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-05 Shuo Yang , Tongzheng Ren , Inderjit S. Dhillon , Sujay Sanghavi

Online platforms routinely compare multi-armed bandit algorithms, such as UCB and Thompson Sampling, to select the best-performing policy. Unlike standard A/B tests for static treatments, each run of a bandit algorithm over $T$ users…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Huiling Meng , Ningyuan Chen , Xuefeng Gao

We consider a finite-armed structured bandit problem in which mean rewards of different arms are known functions of a common hidden parameter $\theta^*$. Since we do not place any restrictions of these functions, the problem setting…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-04 Samarth Gupta , Shreyas Chaudhari , Subhojyoti Mukherjee , Gauri Joshi , Osman Yağan

We study an interesting variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, called the Fair-SMAB problem, where each arm is required to be pulled for at least a given fraction of the total available rounds. We investigate the interplay…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-06 Vishakha Patil , Ganesh Ghalme , Vineet Nair , Y. Narahari

We study a strategic variant of the multi-armed bandit problem, which we coin the strategic click-bandit. This model is motivated by applications in online recommendation where the choice of recommended items depends on both the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-28 Thomas Kleine Buening , Aadirupa Saha , Christos Dimitrakakis , Haifeng Xu

In this paper, we study multi-armed bandits (MAB) and stochastic linear bandits (SLB) with heavy-tailed rewards and quantum reward oracle. Unlike the previous work on quantum bandits that assumes bounded/sub-Gaussian distributions for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-25 Yulian Wu , Chaowen Guan , Vaneet Aggarwal , Di Wang

We study the impact of sharing exploration in multi-armed bandits in a grouped setting where a set of groups have overlapping feasible action sets [Baek and Farias '24]. In this grouped bandit setting, groups share reward observations, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-13 Moïse Blanchard , Vineet Goyal

We define a general framework for a large class of combinatorial multi-armed bandit (CMAB) problems, where subsets of base arms with unknown distributions form super arms. In each round, a super arm is played and the base arms contained in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-03-30 Wei Chen , Yajun Wang , Yang Yuan , Qinshi Wang

In this paper, we consider stochastic multi-armed bandits (MABs) with heavy-tailed rewards, whose $p$-th moment is bounded by a constant $\nu_{p}$ for $1<p\leq2$. First, we propose a novel robust estimator which does not require $\nu_{p}$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Kyungjae Lee , Hongjun Yang , Sungbin Lim , Songhwai Oh

We consider a sequential stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where the agent interacts with bandit over multiple episodes. The reward distribution of the arms remain constant throughout an episode but can change over different episodes.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-20 Rahul N R , Vaibhav Katewa

Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is a family of sampling-based search algorithms widely used for online planning in sequential decision-making domains and at the heart of many recent advances in artificial intelligence. Understanding the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-25 Yiyu Qian , Tim Miller , Zheng Qian , Liyuan Zhao