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We study best arm identification in a variant of the multi-armed bandit problem where the learner has limited precision in arm selection. The learner can only sample arms via certain exploration bundles, which we refer to as boxes. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-11 Kota Srinivas Reddy , P. N. Karthik , Nikhil Karamchandani , Jayakrishnan Nair

We consider the question introduced by \cite{Mason2020} of identifying all the $\varepsilon$-optimal arms in a finite stochastic multi-armed bandit with Gaussian rewards. We give two lower bounds on the sample complexity of any algorithm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-07 Aymen Al Marjani , Tomáš Kocák , Aurélien Garivier

Given a mixture between two populations of coins, "positive" coins that each have -- unknown and potentially different -- bias $\geq\frac{1}{2}+\Delta$ and "negative" coins with bias $\leq\frac{1}{2}-\Delta$, we consider the task of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-08 Jasper C. H. Lee , Paul Valiant

In the paper it is proven that the two-players turn-based stochastic game "Risk or Safety" has a unique solution. Both players need to play the same strategy if they want to maximize their winning chances. An analytical method based on the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-03-03 Rüdiger Jehn

We consider the problem of \textit{best arm identification} with a \textit{fixed budget $T$}, in the $K$-armed stochastic bandit setting, with arms distribution defined on $[0,1]$. We prove that any bandit strategy, for at least one bandit…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-05-31 Alexandra Carpentier , Andrea Locatelli

Motivated by applications in clinical trials and finance, we study the problem of online convex optimization (with bandit feedback) where the decision maker is risk-averse. We provide two algorithms to solve this problem. The first one is a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-02 Adrian Rivera Cardoso , Huan Xu

We study stochastic linear optimization problem with bandit feedback. The set of arms take values in an $N$-dimensional space and belong to a bounded polyhedron described by finitely many linear inequalities. We provide a lower bound for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-09-29 Manjesh K. Hanawal , Amir Leshem , Venkatesh Saligrama

In this paper, we consider the problem of optimization and learning for constrained and multi-objective Markov decision processes, for both discounted rewards and expected average rewards. We formulate the problems as zero-sum games where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-05 Ather Gattami , Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Agarwal

We introduce the "inverse bandit" problem of estimating the rewards of a multi-armed bandit instance from observing the learning process of a low-regret demonstrator. Existing approaches to the related problem of inverse reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-02-23 Wenshuo Guo , Kumar Krishna Agrawal , Aditya Grover , Vidya Muthukumar , Ashwin Pananjady

This paper considers the optimal adaptive allocation of measurement effort for identifying the best among a finite set of options or designs. An experimenter sequentially chooses designs to measure and observes noisy signals of their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-11 Daniel Russo

What would you do if you were invited to play a game where you were given \$25 and allowed to place bets for 30 minutes on a coin that you were told was biased to come up heads 60% of the time? This is exactly what we did, gathering 61…

General Finance · Quantitative Finance 2017-01-06 Victor Haghani , Richard Dewey

We consider the best arm identification (BAI) problem in the $K-$armed bandit framework with a modification - the agent is allowed to play a subset of arms at each time slot instead of one arm. Consequently, the agent observes the sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Siddhartha Parupudi , Gourab Ghatak

In this report, we survey Bayesian Optimization methods focussed on the Multi-Armed Bandit Problem. We take the help of the paper "Portfolio Allocation for Bayesian Optimization". We report a small literature survey on the acquisition…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-16 Abhilash Nandy , Chandan Kumar , Deepak Mewada , Soumya Sharma

We consider a bandit problem where the buget is smaller than the number of arms, which may be infinite. In this regime, the usual objective in the literature is to minimize simple regret. To analyze broad classes of distributions with…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-11-04 Emmanuel Pilliat

Active learning methods have shown great promise in reducing the number of samples necessary for learning. As automated learning systems are adopted into real-time, real-world decision-making pipelines, it is increasingly important that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Romain Camilleri , Andrew Wagenmaker , Jamie Morgenstern , Lalit Jain , Kevin Jamieson

The present paper deals with the problem of allocating patients to two competing treatments in the presence of covariates or prognostic factors in order to achieve a good trade-off among ethical concerns, inferential precision and…

Methodology · Statistics 2012-08-17 Alessandro Baldi Antognini , Maroussa Zagoraiou

Motivated by models of human decision making proposed to explain commonly observed deviations from conventional expected value preferences, we formulate two stochastic multi-armed bandit problems with distorted probabilities on the reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Ravi Kumar Kolla , Prashanth L. A. , Aditya Gopalan , Krishna Jagannathan , Michael Fu , Steve Marcus

This work proposes a procedure for designing algorithms for specific adaptive data collection tasks like active learning and pure-exploration multi-armed bandits. Unlike the design of traditional adaptive algorithms that rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Jifan Zhang , Lalit Jain , Kevin Jamieson

We consider a decentralized stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with multiple players. Each player aims to maximize his/her own reward by pulling an arm. The arms give rewards based on i.i.d. stochastic Bernoulli distributions. Players…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-12-05 Noyan Evirgen , Alper Kose , Hakan Gokcesu

Gameplay under various forms of uncertainty has been widely studied. Feldman et al. (2010) studied a particularly low-information setting in which one observes the opponent's actions but no payoffs, not even one's own, and introduced an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Avrim Blum , Melissa Dutz