Related papers: On Explore-Then-Commit Strategies
In the contextual linear bandit setting, algorithms built on the optimism principle fail to exploit the structure of the problem and have been shown to be asymptotically suboptimal. In this paper, we follow recent approaches of deriving…
We study the impact of sharing exploration in multi-armed bandits in a grouped setting where a set of groups have overlapping feasible action sets [Baek and Farias '24]. In this grouped bandit setting, groups share reward observations, and…
We consider the problem of minimizing the regret in stochastic multi-armed bandit, when the measure of goodness of an arm is not the mean return, but some general function of the mean and the variance.We characterize the conditions under…
The problem of multi-armed bandits (MAB) asks to make sequential decisions while balancing between exploitation and exploration, and have been successfully applied to a wide range of practical scenarios. Various algorithms have been…
Satisficing is a relaxation of maximizing and allows for less risky decision making in the face of uncertainty. We propose two sets of satisficing objectives for the multi-armed bandit problem, where the objective is to achieve reward-based…
Consider the sequential optimization of a continuous, possibly non-convex, and expensive to evaluate objective function $f$. The problem can be cast as a Gaussian Process (GP) bandit where $f$ lives in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space…
In bandit settings, optimizing long-term regret metrics requires exploration, which corresponds to sometimes taking myopically sub-optimal actions. When a long-lived principal merely recommends actions to be executed by a sequence of…
We investigate the optimality of perturbation based algorithms in the stochastic and adversarial multi-armed bandit problems. For the stochastic case, we provide a unified regret analysis for both sub-Weibull and bounded perturbations when…
The Competing Bandits framework is a recently emerging area that integrates multi-armed bandits in online learning with stable matching in game theory. While conventional models assume that all players and arms are constantly available, in…
We examine a multi-armed bandit problem with contextual information, where the objective is to ensure that each arm receives a minimum aggregated reward across contexts while simultaneously maximizing the total cumulative reward. This…
We investigate the adversarial bandit problem with multiple plays under semi-bandit feedback. We introduce a highly efficient algorithm that asymptotically achieves the performance of the best switching $m$-arm strategy with minimax optimal…
Algorithms for hyperparameter optimization abound, all of which work well under different and often unverifiable assumptions. Motivated by the general challenge of sequentially choosing which algorithm to use, we study the more specific…
We study the $\textit{single-index bandit}$ problem, where rewards depend on an unknown one-dimensional projection of high-dimensional contexts through an unknown reward function. This model extends linear and generalized linear bandits to…
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…
This paper studies bandit problems where an agent has access to offline data that might be utilized to potentially improve the estimation of each arm's reward distribution. A major obstacle in this setting is the existence of compound…
We study incentivized exploration in multi-armed bandit (MAB) settings with infinitely many arms modeled as elements in continuous metric spaces. Unlike classical bandit models, we consider scenarios where the decision-maker (principal)…
Contextual bandit algorithms are sensitive to the estimation method of the outcome model as well as the exploration method used, particularly in the presence of rich heterogeneity or complex outcome models, which can lead to difficult…
We consider the adversarial multi-armed bandit problem under delayed feedback. We analyze variants of the Exp3 algorithm that tune their step-size using only information (about the losses and delays) available at the time of the decisions,…
Motivated by the fact that humans like some level of unpredictability or novelty, and might therefore get quickly bored when interacting with a stationary policy, we introduce a novel non-stationary bandit problem, where the expected reward…
Reinforcement learning addresses the dilemma between exploration to find profitable actions and exploitation to act according to the best observations already made. Bandit problems are one such class of problems in stateless environments…