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In this paper, we analyze the continuous armed bandit problems for nonconvex cost functions under certain smoothness and sublevel set assumptions. We first derive an upper bound on the expected cumulative regret of a simple bin splitting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-31 Puning Zhao , Lifeng Lai

Despite the great interest in the bandit problem, designing efficient algorithms for complex models remains challenging, as there is typically no analytical way to quantify uncertainty. In this paper, we propose Multiplier Bootstrap-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-06 Runzhe Wan , Haoyu Wei , Branislav Kveton , Rui Song

Most bandit algorithm designs are purely theoretical. Therefore, they have strong regret guarantees, but also are often too conservative in practice. In this work, we pioneer the idea of algorithm design by minimizing the empirical Bayes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-12 Chih-Wei Hsu , Branislav Kveton , Ofer Meshi , Martin Mladenov , Csaba Szepesvari

In this paper, we consider the distributed stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, where a global arm set can be accessed by multiple players independently. The players are allowed to exchange their history of observations with each other at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-13 Shuang Liu , Cheng Chen , Zhihua Zhang

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

This paper is devoted to regret lower bounds in the classical model of stochastic multi-armed bandit. A well-known result of Lai and Robbins, which has then been extended by Burnetas and Katehakis, has established the presence of a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2011-12-19 Antoine Salomon , Jean-Yves Audibert , Issam El Alaoui

We study reward maximisation in a wide class of structured stochastic multi-armed bandit problems, where the mean rewards of arms satisfy some given structural constraints, e.g. linear, unimodal, sparse, etc. Our aim is to develop methods…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-03 Rémy Degenne , Han Shao , Wouter M. Koolen

We consider a linear stochastic bandit problem involving $M$ agents that can collaborate via a central server to minimize regret. A fraction $\alpha$ of these agents are adversarial and can act arbitrarily, leading to the following tension:…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-08 Aritra Mitra , Arman Adibi , George J. Pappas , Hamed Hassani

We study the problem of determining an effective exploration strategy in static and non-linear optimization problems, which depend on an unknown scalar parameter to be learned from online collected noisy data. An optimal trade-off between…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-13 Ying Wang , Mirko Pasquini , Kévin Colin , Håkan Hjalmarsson

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 develop a novel and generic algorithm for the adversarial multi-armed bandit problem (or more generally the combinatorial semi-bandit problem). When instantiated differently, our algorithm achieves various new data-dependent regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-08 Chen-Yu Wei , Haipeng Luo

We study the problem of infrequent exploration in linear bandits, addressing a significant yet overlooked gap between fully adaptive exploratory methods (e.g., UCB and Thompson Sampling), which explore potentially at every time step, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Harin Lee , Min-hwan Oh

We propose a novel algorithm for multi-player multi-armed bandits without collision sensing information. Our algorithm circumvents two problems shared by all state-of-the-art algorithms: it does not need as an input a lower bound on the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-06-07 Wei Huang , Richard Combes , Cindy Trinh

The stochastic multi-armed bandit problem is well understood when the reward distributions are sub-Gaussian. In this paper we examine the bandit problem under the weaker assumption that the distributions have moments of order 1+\epsilon,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-09-11 Sébastien Bubeck , Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi , Gábor Lugosi

Recent studies have shown that reinforcement learning with KL-regularized objectives can enjoy faster rates of convergence or logarithmic regret, in contrast to the classical $\sqrt{T}$-type regret in the unregularized setting. However, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Kaixuan Ji , Qingyue Zhao , Heyang Zhao , Qiwei Di , Quanquan Gu

We improve the efficiency of algorithms for stochastic \emph{combinatorial semi-bandits}. In most interesting problems, state-of-the-art algorithms take advantage of structural properties of rewards, such as \emph{independence}. However,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-24 Pierre Perrault , Vianney Perchet , Michal Valko

In this paper, we consider a best action identification problem in the stochastic linear bandit setup with a fixed confident constraint. In the considered best action identification problem, instead of minimizing the accumulative regret as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-04 Jun Geng , Lifeng Lai

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 problem of regret minimization in a multi-armed bandit setup where the agent is allowed to play multiple arms at each round by spreading the resources usually allocated to only one arm. At each iteration the agent selects a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Matias I. Müller , Cristian R. Rojas

We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem when one knows the value $\mu^{(\star)}$ of an optimal arm, as a well as a positive lower bound on the smallest positive gap $\Delta$. We propose a new randomized policy that attains a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2013-02-13 Sébastien Bubeck , Vianney Perchet , Philippe Rigollet