Related papers: Best-of-K Bandits
We consider a multiobjective multiarmed bandit problem with lexicographically ordered objectives. In this problem, the goal of the learner is to select arms that are lexicographic optimal as much as possible without knowing the arm reward…
In this paper we study a generalized version of classical multi-armed bandits (MABs) problem by allowing for arbitrary constraints on constituent bandits at each decision point. The motivation of this study comes from many situations that…
We consider a variant of the classic multi-armed bandit problem where the expected reward of each arm is a function of an unknown parameter. The arms are divided into different groups, each of which has a common parameter. Therefore, when…
We introduce the functional bandit problem, where the objective is to find an arm that optimises a known functional of the unknown arm-reward distributions. These problems arise in many settings such as maximum entropy methods in natural…
We consider the setup of stochastic multi-armed bandits in the case when reward distributions are piecewise i.i.d. and bounded with unknown changepoints. We focus on the case when changes happen simultaneously on all arms, and in stark…
Recent advances in bandit tools and techniques for sequential learning are steadily enabling new applications and are promising the resolution of a range of challenging related problems. We study the game tree search problem, where the goal…
This paper studies a sequential decision problem where payoff distributions are known and where the riskiness of payoffs matters. Equivalently, it studies sequential choice from a repeated set of independent lotteries. The decision-maker is…
The classical multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem involves a learner and a collection of K independent arms, each with its own ex ante unknown independent reward distribution. At each one of a finite number of rounds, the learner selects one…
We study an original problem of pure exploration in a strategic bandit model motivated by Monte Carlo Tree Search. It consists in identifying the best action in a game, when the player may sample random outcomes of sequentially chosen pairs…
We investigate contextual bandits in the presence of side-observations across arms in order to design recommendation algorithms for users connected via social networks. Users in social networks respond to their friends' activity, and hence…
Contextual bandits are online learners that, given an input, select an arm and receive a reward for that arm. They use the reward as a learning signal and aim to maximize the total reward over the inputs. Contextual bandits are commonly…
Most bandit policies are designed to either minimize regret in any problem instance, making very few assumptions about the underlying environment, or in a Bayesian sense, assuming a prior distribution over environment parameters. The former…
We lay the foundations of a non-parametric theory of best-arm identification in multi-armed bandits with a fixed budget T. We consider general, possibly non-parametric, models D for distributions over the arms; an overarching example is the…
Decision making under uncertain environments in the maximization of expected reward while minimizing its risk is one of the ubiquitous problems in many subjects. Here, we introduce a novel problem setting in stochastic bandit optimization…
We consider the decentralized exploration problem: a set of players collaborate to identify the best arm by asynchronously interacting with the same stochastic environment. The objective is to insure privacy in the best arm identification…
We consider a sequential subset selection problem under parameter uncertainty, where at each time step, the decision maker selects a subset of cardinality $K$ from $N$ possible items (arms), and observes a (bandit) feedback in the form of…
We consider the best-k-arm identification problem for multi-armed bandits, where the objective is to select the exact set of k arms with the highest mean rewards by sequentially allocating measurement effort. We characterize the necessary…
We study a strategic variant of the multi-armed bandit problem, which we coin the strategic click-bandit. This model is motivated by applications in online recommendation where the choice of recommended items depends on both the…
Motivated by emerging applications such as live-streaming e-commerce, promotions and recommendations, we introduce and solve a general class of non-stationary multi-armed bandit problems that have the following two features: (i) the…
In the classical multi-armed bandit problem, instance-dependent algorithms attain improved performance on "easy" problems with a gap between the best and second-best arm. Are similar guarantees possible for contextual bandits? While…