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We study the problem of minimising regret in two-armed bandit problems with Gaussian rewards. Our objective is to use this simple setting to illustrate that strategies based on an exploration phase (up to a stopping time) followed by…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-11-15 Aurélien Garivier , Emilie Kaufmann , Tor Lattimore

We consider the problem of learning in single-player and multiplayer multiarmed bandit models. Bandit problems are classes of online learning problems that capture exploration versus exploitation tradeoffs. In a multiarmed bandit model,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-12-02 Naumaan Nayyar , Dileep Kalathil , Rahul Jain

Continuously learning and leveraging the knowledge accumulated from prior tasks in order to improve future performance is a long standing machine learning problem. In this paper, we study the problem in the multi-armed bandit framework with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-29 Matthieu Jedor , Jonathan Louëdec , Vianney Perchet

We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem in the case when the arm samples are dependent over time and generated from so-called weak $\cC$-mixing processes. We establish a $\cC-$Mix Improved UCB agorithm and provide both…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-26 Oleksandr Zadorozhnyi , Gilles Blanchard , Alexandra Carpentier

Fast changing states or volatile environments pose a significant challenge to online optimization, which needs to perform rapid adaptation under limited observation. In this paper, we give query and regret optimal bandit algorithms under…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-18 Zhou Lu , Qiuyi Zhang , Xinyi Chen , Fred Zhang , David Woodruff , Elad Hazan

We consider the restless Markov bandit problem, in which the state of each arm evolves according to a Markov process independently of the learner's actions. We suggest an algorithm that after $T$ steps achieves $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-10-23 Ronald Ortner , Daniil Ryabko , Peter Auer , Rémi Munos

We make three contributions to the theory of k-armed adversarial bandits. First, we prove a first-order bound for a modified variant of the INF strategy by Audibert and Bubeck [2009], without sacrificing worst case optimality or modifying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-25 Roman Pogodin , Tor Lattimore

The problem of bandit with graph feedback generalizes both the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem and the learning with expert advice problem by encoding in a directed graph how the loss vector can be observed in each round of the game. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-07 Yuchen He , Chihao Zhang

This paper introduces the framework of multi-armed sampling, which serves as the sampling counterpart to the optimization problem of multi-armed bandits. Our primary motivation is to rigorously examine the exploration-exploitation trade-off…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Mohammad Pedramfar , Siamak Ravanbakhsh

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

We consider the classic online learning and stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems, when at each step, the online policy can probe and find out which of a small number ($k$) of choices has better reward (or loss) before making its…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-11-08 Aditya Bhaskara , Sreenivas Gollapudi , Sungjin Im , Kostas Kollias , Kamesh Munagala

This work addresses the problem of regret minimization in non-stochastic multi-armed bandit problems, focusing on performance guarantees that hold with high probability. Such results are rather scarce in the literature since proving them…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-04 Gergely Neu

We study an extension of the classic stochastic multi-armed bandit problem which involves multiple plays and Markovian rewards in the rested bandits setting. In order to tackle this problem we consider an adaptive allocation rule which at…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-07-15 Vrettos Moulos

We study a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where an agent is granted a free exploration budget before regret accumulates, a setting not captured by the classic regret minimization or pure exploration paradigms. The goal is to design…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Yunlong Hou , Zixin Zhong , Vincent Y. F. Tan

We study the linear contextual bandit problem with finite action sets. When the problem dimension is $d$, the time horizon is $T$, and there are $n \leq 2^{d/2}$ candidate actions per time period, we (1) show that the minimax expected…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-08-20 Yingkai Li , Yining Wang , Yuan Zhou

We study the problem of information sharing and cooperation in Multi-Player Multi-Armed bandits. We propose the first algorithm that achieves logarithmic regret for this problem when the collision reward is unknown. Our results are based on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Aldo Pacchiano , Peter Bartlett , Michael I. Jordan

Consider the sequential optimization of an expensive to evaluate and possibly non-convex objective function $f$ from noisy feedback, that can be considered as a continuum-armed bandit problem. Upper bounds on the regret performance of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-03-11 Sattar Vakili , Kia Khezeli , Victor Picheny

We study the linear bandit problem that accounts for partially observable features. Without proper handling, unobserved features can lead to linear regret in the decision horizon $T$, as their influence on rewards is unknown. To tackle this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-19 Wonyoung Kim , Sungwoo Park , Garud Iyengar , Assaf Zeevi , Min-hwan Oh

In performative prediction, the deployment of a predictive model triggers a shift in the data distribution. As these shifts are typically unknown ahead of time, the learner needs to deploy a model to get feedback about the distribution it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Meena Jagadeesan , Tijana Zrnic , Celestine Mendler-Dünner

We develop a new approach to obtaining high probability regret bounds for online learning with bandit feedback against an adaptive adversary. While existing approaches all require carefully constructing optimistic and biased loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-02 Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Mengxiao Zhang