Related papers: Thompson Sampling: An Asymptotically Optimal Finit…

We analyze the regret of combinatorial Thompson sampling (CTS) for the combinatorial multi-armed bandit with probabilistically triggered arms under the semi-bandit feedback setting. We assume that the learner has access to an exact…

We design and analyse variations of the classical Thompson sampling (TS) procedure for Bayesian optimisation (BO) in settings where function evaluations are expensive, but can be performed in parallel. Our theoretical analysis shows that a…

Thompson sampling has become a ubiquitous approach to online decision problems with bandit feedback. The key algorithmic task for Thompson sampling is drawing a sample from the posterior of the optimal action. We propose an alternative arm…

Non-stationarity is ubiquitous in human behavior and addressing it in the contextual bandits is challenging. Several works have addressed the problem by investigating semi-parametric contextual bandits and warned that ignoring…

We propose an optimal sequential methodology for obtaining confidence intervals for a binomial proportion $\theta$. Assuming that an i.i.d. random sequence of Benoulli($\theta$) trials is observed sequentially, we are interested in…

We consider a sequential decision-making problem where an agent can take one action at a time and each action has a stochastic temporal extent, i.e., a new action cannot be taken until the previous one is finished. Upon completion, the…

The regret lower bound of Lai and Robbins (1985), the gold standard for checking optimality of bandit algorithms, considers arm size fixed as sample size goes to infinity. We show that when arm size increases polynomially with sample size,…

We present an algorithm based on posterior sampling (aka Thompson sampling) that achieves near-optimal worst-case regret bounds when the underlying Markov Decision Process (MDP) is communicating with a finite, though unknown, diameter. Our…

In the multiarmed bandit problem a gambler chooses an arm of a slot machine to pull considering a tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. We study the stochastic bandit problem where each arm has a reward distribution supported in a…

We propose minimum empirical divergence (MED) policy for the multiarmed bandit problem. We prove asymptotic optimality of the proposed policy for the case of finite support models. In our setting, Burnetas and Katehakis has already proposed…

We propose ${\tt AdaTS}$, a Thompson sampling algorithm that adapts sequentially to bandit tasks that it interacts with. The key idea in ${\tt AdaTS}$ is to adapt to an unknown task prior distribution by maintaining a distribution over its…

This paper considers the multi-armed thresholding bandit problem -- identifying all arms whose expected rewards are above a predefined threshold via as few pulls (or rounds) as possible -- proposed by Locatelli et al. [2016] recently.…

This paper introduces and addresses a wide class of stochastic bandit problems where the function mapping the arm to the corresponding reward exhibits some known structural properties. Most existing structures (e.g. linear, Lipschitz,…

We consider online sequential decision problems where an agent must balance exploration and exploitation. We derive a set of Bayesian `optimistic' policies which, in the stochastic multi-armed bandit case, includes the Thompson sampling…

We study stochastic structured bandits for minimizing regret. The fact that the popular optimistic algorithms do not achieve the asymptotic instance-dependent regret optimality (asymptotic optimality for short) has recently alluded…

We investigate stochastic combinatorial multi-armed bandit with semi-bandit feedback (CMAB). In CMAB, the question of the existence of an efficient policy with an optimal asymptotic regret (up to a factor poly-logarithmic with the action…

Stochastic rising rested bandit (SRRB) is a setting where the arms' expected rewards increase as they are pulled. It models scenarios in which the performances of the different options grow as an effect of an underlying learning process…

We propose a new strategy for best-arm identification with fixed confidence of Gaussian variables with bounded means and unit variance. This strategy, called Exploration-Biased Sampling, is not only asymptotically optimal: it is to the best…

Thompson sampling (TS) has optimal regret and excellent empirical performance in multi-armed bandit problems. Yet, in Bayesian optimization, TS underperforms popular acquisition functions (e.g., EI, UCB). TS samples arms according to the…

We investigate the use of bootstrapping in the bandit setting. We first show that the commonly used non-parametric bootstrapping (NPB) procedure can be provably inefficient and establish a near-linear lower bound on the regret incurred by…