Related papers: Refined Lower Bounds for Adversarial Bandits
In this paper, we introduce the notion of replicable policies in the context of stochastic bandits, one of the canonical problems in interactive learning. A policy in the bandit environment is called replicable if it pulls, with high…
We study a multiplayer stochastic multi-armed bandit problem in which players cannot communicate, and if two or more players pull the same arm, a collision occurs and the involved players receive zero reward. We consider the challenging…
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…
In $K$-armed dueling bandits, the learner receives preference feedback between arms, and the regret of an arm is defined in terms of its suboptimality to a $\textit{winner}$ arm. The $\textit{non-stationary}$ variant of the problem,…
We study nonparametric contextual bandits under batch constraints, where the expected reward for each action is modeled as a smooth function of covariates, and the policy updates are made at the end of each batch of observations. We…
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…
In this paper, we consider the problem of sleeping bandits with stochastic action sets and adversarial rewards. In this setting, in contrast to most work in bandits, the actions may not be available at all times. For instance, some products…
We determine the minimax optimal expected regret in the classic non-stochastic multi-armed bandit with expert advice problem, by proving a lower bound that matches the upper bound of Kale (2014). The two bounds determine the minimax optimal…
We study a new non-stochastic federated multi-armed bandit problem with multiple agents collaborating via a communication network. The losses of the arms are assigned by an oblivious adversary that specifies the loss of each arm not only…
We revisit the study of optimal regret rates in bandit combinatorial optimization---a fundamental framework for sequential decision making under uncertainty that abstracts numerous combinatorial prediction problems. We prove that the…
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…
We present a new strategy for gap estimation in randomized algorithms for multiarmed bandits and combine it with the EXP3++ algorithm of Seldin and Slivkins (2014). In the stochastic regime the strategy reduces dependence of regret on a…
Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithms are a widely-used class of sequential algorithms for the $K$-armed bandit problem. Despite extensive research over the past decades aimed at understanding their asymptotic and (near) minimax…
We study the problem of worst case regret in piecewise stationary multi armed bandits. While the minimax theory for stationary bandits is well established, understanding analogous limits in time-varying settings is challenging. Existing…
When multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms allocate pulls among competing arms, the resulting allocation can exhibit huge variation. This is particularly harmful in modern applications such as learning-enhanced platform operations and…
In this paper, we study the problem of stochastic linear bandits with finite action sets. Most of existing work assume the payoffs are bounded or sub-Gaussian, which may be violated in some scenarios such as financial markets. To settle…
In this work we consider adversarial contextual bandits with risk constraints. At each round, nature prepares a context, a cost for each arm, and additionally a risk for each arm. The learner leverages the context to pull an arm and then…
Bandits with Knapsacks (BwK) is a general model for multi-armed bandits under supply/budget constraints. While worst-case regret bounds for BwK are well-understood, we present three results that go beyond the worst-case perspective. First,…
Combinatorial bandits extend the classical bandit framework to settings where the learner selects multiple arms in each round, motivated by applications such as online recommendation and assortment optimization. While extensions of upper…
Recent works have shown that agents facing independent instances of a stochastic $K$-armed bandit can collaborate to decrease regret. However, these works assume that each agent always recommends their individual best-arm estimates to other…