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Related papers: Leveraging Side Observations in Stochastic Bandits

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We consider multi-armed bandit problems in social groups wherein each individual has bounded memory and shares the common goal of learning the best arm/option. We say an individual learns the best option if eventually (as $t \to \infty$) it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-13 Lili Su , Martin Zubeldia , Nancy Lynch

We study a variant of the classical stochastic $K$-armed bandit where observing the outcome of each arm is expensive, but cheap approximations to this outcome are available. For example, in online advertising the performance of an ad can be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-11-01 Kirthevasan Kandasamy , Gautam Dasarathy , Jeff Schneider , Barnabás Póczos

We define and analyze a multi-agent multi-armed bandit problem in which decision-making agents can observe the choices and rewards of their neighbors under a linear observation cost. Neighbors are defined by a network graph that encodes the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-04-09 Udari Madhushani , Naomi Ehrich Leonard

Learning good interventions in a causal graph can be modelled as a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with side-information. First, we study this problem when interventions are more expensive than observations and a budget is specified.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-15 Vineet Nair , Vishakha Patil , Gaurav Sinha

Stochastic multi-armed bandits solve the Exploration-Exploitation dilemma and ultimately maximize the expected reward. Nonetheless, in many practical problems, maximizing the expected reward is not the most desirable objective. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-01-10 Amir Sani , Alessandro Lazaric , Rémi Munos

We study the non-stationary stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, where the reward statistics of each arm may change several times during the course of learning. The performance of a learning algorithm is evaluated in terms of their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-09 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Andras Gyorgy , Nevena Lazic

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

Motivated by applications such as online labor markets we consider a variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where we have a collection of arms representing strategic agents with different performance characteristics. The…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Seyed A. Esmaeili , Suho Shin , Aleksandrs Slivkins

We consider a stochastic bandit problem with a possibly infinite number of arms. We write $p^*$ for the proportion of optimal arms and $\Delta$ for the minimal mean-gap between optimal and sub-optimal arms. We characterize the optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-08 Rianne de Heide , James Cheshire , Pierre Ménard , Alexandra Carpentier

A latent bandit problem is one in which the learning agent knows the arm reward distributions conditioned on an unknown discrete latent state. The primary goal of the agent is to identify the latent state, after which it can act optimally.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Joey Hong , Branislav Kveton , Manzil Zaheer , Yinlam Chow , Amr Ahmed , Craig Boutilier

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-02-25 Tor Lattimore

We study the linear stochastic bandit problem, relaxing the standard i.i.d. assumption on the observation noise. As an alternative to this restrictive assumption, we allow the noise terms across rounds to be sub-Gaussian but interdependent,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-28 Baptiste Abélès , Eugenio Clerico , Hamish Flynn , Gergely Neu

I study adversarial attacks against stochastic bandit algorithms. At each round, the learner chooses an arm, and a stochastic reward is generated. The adversary strategically adds corruption to the reward, and the learner is only able to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-18 Shiliang Zuo

This paper investigates stochastic and adversarial combinatorial multi-armed bandit problems. In the stochastic setting under semi-bandit feedback, we derive a problem-specific regret lower bound, and discuss its scaling with the dimension…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-09 Richard Combes , M. Sadegh Talebi , Alexandre Proutiere , Marc Lelarge

We propose a novel formulation of group fairness with biased feedback in the contextual multi-armed bandit (CMAB) setting. In the CMAB setting, a sequential decision maker must, at each time step, choose an arm to pull from a finite set of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-17 Candice Schumann , Zhi Lang , Nicholas Mattei , John P. Dickerson

Recommender systems are a ubiquitous feature of online platforms. Increasingly, they are explicitly tasked with increasing users' long-term satisfaction. In this context, we study a content exploration task, which we formalize as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-21 Thomas M. McDonald , Lucas Maystre , Mounia Lalmas , Daniel Russo , Kamil Ciosek

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) is a widely adopted framework for sequential decision-making under uncertainty. Traditional bandit algorithms rely solely on online data, which tends to be scarce as it must be gathered during the online phase when…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-04-23 Wenlong Ji , Yihan Pan , Ruihao Zhu , Lihua Lei

We study the nonstationary stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem in which the distribution of rewards associated with each arm are assumed to be time-varying and the total variation in the expected rewards is subject to a variation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-25 Lai Wei , Vaibhav Srivastava

We present and study a partial-information model of online learning, where a decision maker repeatedly chooses from a finite set of actions, and observes some subset of the associated losses. This naturally models several situations where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-10-01 Noga Alon , Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi , Claudio Gentile , Shie Mannor , Yishay Mansour , Ohad Shamir

We consider a non stationary multi-armed bandit in which the population preferences are positively and negatively reinforced by the observed rewards. The objective of the algorithm is to shape the population preferences to maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-04 Viraj Nadkarni , D. Manjunath , Sharayu Moharir