Related papers: On Explore-Then-Commit Strategies
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…
We revisit lower bounds on the regret in the case of multi-armed bandit problems. We obtain non-asymptotic, distribution-dependent bounds and provide straightforward proofs based only on well-known properties of Kullback-Leibler…
We investigate the regret-minimisation problem in a multi-armed bandit setting with arbitrary corruptions. Similar to the classical setup, the agent receives rewards generated independently from the distribution of the arm chosen at each…
We study finite-armed stochastic bandits where the rewards of each arm might be correlated to those of other arms. We introduce a novel phased algorithm that exploits the given structure to build confidence sets over the parameters of the…
In multi-armed bandits, the most-explored arms are the most informative, while reward maximization typically pulls only the best arm. We study the tradeoff between identifying arm means accurately and accumulating reward, and present an…
Optimal regret bounds for Multi-Armed Bandit problems are now well documented. They can be classified into two categories based on the growth rate with respect to the time horizon $T$: (i) small, distribution-dependent, bounds of order of…
Research on the multi-armed bandit problem has studied the trade-off of exploration and exploitation in depth. However, there are numerous applications where the cardinal absolute-valued feedback model (e.g. ratings from one to five) is not…
We consider bandit problems involving a large (possibly infinite) collection of arms, in which the expected reward of each arm is a linear function of an $r$-dimensional random vector $\mathbf{Z} \in \mathbb{R}^r$, where $r \geq 2$. The…
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…
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…
We consider the classical multi-armed bandit problem, but with strategic arms. In this context, each arm is characterized by a bounded support reward distribution and strategically aims to maximize its own utility by potentially retaining a…
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…
We study how the regret guarantees of nonstochastic multi-armed bandits can be improved, if the effective range of the losses in each round is small (e.g. the maximal difference between two losses in a given round). Despite a recent…
We consider regret minimization in a general collaborative multi-agent multi-armed bandit model, in which each agent faces a finite set of arms and may communicate with other agents through a central controller. The optimal arm for each…
In this paper, we investigate the existence of online learning algorithms with bandit feedback that simultaneously guarantee $O(1)$ regret compared to a given comparator strategy, and $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret compared to any fixed…
The piecewise-stationary bandit problem is an important variant of the multi-armed bandit problem that further considers abrupt changes in the reward distributions. The main theme of the problem is the trade-off between exploration for…
Contextual bandits serve as a fundamental model for many sequential decision making tasks. The most popular theoretically justified approaches are based on the optimism principle. While these algorithms can be practical, they are known to…
We study the challenging exploration incentive problem in both bandit and reinforcement learning, where the rewards are scale-free and potentially unbounded, driven by real-world scenarios and differing from existing work. Past works in…
In the classical multi-armed bandit problem, d arms are available to the decision maker who pulls them sequentially in order to maximize his cumulative reward. Guarantees can be obtained on a relative quantity called regret, which scales…
Multi-armed bandits (MAB) model sequential decision making problems, in which a learner sequentially chooses arms with unknown reward distributions in order to maximize its cumulative reward. Most of the prior work on MAB assumes that the…