Related papers: Extended UCB Policies for Multi-armed Bandit Probl…

We consider the classical multi-armed bandit problem with Markovian rewards. When played an arm changes its state in a Markovian fashion while it remains frozen when not played. The player receives a state-dependent reward each time it…

I present the first algorithm for stochastic finite-armed bandits that simultaneously enjoys order-optimal problem-dependent regret and worst-case regret. Besides the theoretical results, the new algorithm is simple, efficient and…

Classical multi-armed bandit problems use the expected value of an arm as a metric to evaluate its goodness. However, the expected value is a risk-neutral metric. In many applications like finance, one is interested in balancing the…

The fundamental problem of multiple secondary users contending for opportunistic spectrum access over multiple channels in cognitive radio networks has been formulated recently as a decentralized multi-armed bandit (D-MAB) problem. In a…

This paper studies regret minimization in a multi-armed bandit. It is well known that side information, such as the prior distribution of arm means in Thompson sampling, can improve the statistical efficiency of the bandit algorithm. While…

Large language models (LLMs) have been adopted to solve sequential decision-making tasks such as multi-armed bandits (MAB), in which an LLM is directly instructed to select the arms to pull in every iteration. However, this paradigm of…

We consider a continuous-time multi-arm bandit problem (CTMAB), where the learner can sample arms any number of times in a given interval and obtain a random reward from each sample, however, increasing the frequency of sampling incurs an…

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems serve as a fundamental building block for more complex reinforcement learning algorithms. However, evaluating and comparing MAB algorithms remains challenging due to the lack of standardized conditions and…

In this paper, we consider a novel variant of the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, MAB with cost subsidy, which models many real-life applications where the learning agent has to pay to select an arm and is concerned about optimizing…

We study the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem with composite and anonymous feedback. In this model, the reward of pulling an arm spreads over a period of time (we call this period as reward interval) and the player receives partial rewards…

In retail, there are predictable yet dramatic time-dependent patterns in customer behavior, such as periodic changes in the number of visitors, or increases in customers just before major holidays. The current paradigm of multi-armed bandit…

Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) is arguably the most commonly used method for linear multi-arm bandit problems. While conceptually and computationally simple, this method highly relies on the confidence bounds, failing to strike the optimal…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a widely researched area in artificial intelligence that focuses on teaching agents decision-making through interactions with their environment. A key subset includes stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) and…

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…

We study the Improving Multi-Armed Bandit (IMAB) problem, where the reward obtained from an arm increases with the number of pulls it receives. This model provides an elegant abstraction for many real-world problems in domains such as…

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) processes constitute a foundational subclass of reinforcement learning problems and represent a central topic in statistical decision theory, but are limited to simultaneous adaptive allocation and sequential test,…

Classic no-regret multi-armed bandit algorithms, including the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB), Hedge, and EXP3, are inherently unfair by design. Their unfairness stems from their objective of playing the most rewarding arm as frequently as…

The restless bandit problem is one of the most well-studied generalizations of the celebrated stochastic multi-armed bandit problem in decision theory. In its ultimate generality, the restless bandit problem is known to be PSPACE-Hard to…

We study the $K$-Max combinatorial multi-armed bandits problem with continuous outcome distributions and weak value-index feedback: each base arm has an unknown continuous outcome distribution, and in each round the learning agent selects…

We introduce a multi-armed bandit model where the reward is a sum of multiple random variables, and each action only alters the distributions of some of them. After each action, the agent observes the realizations of all the variables. This…