Related papers: On Explore-Then-Commit Strategies

We consider the fixed-budget best arm identification problem with rewards following normal distributions. In this problem, the forecaster is given $K$ arms (or treatments) and $T$ time steps. The forecaster attempts to find the arm with the…

We consider the combinatorial volatile Gaussian process (GP) semi-bandit problem. Each round, an agent is provided a set of available base arms and must select a subset of them to maximize the long-term cumulative reward. We study the…

We address the problem of multi-group mean estimation, which seeks to allocate a finite sampling budget across multiple groups to obtain uniformly accurate estimates of their means. Unlike classical multi-armed bandits, whose objective is…

This paper studies multi-stage systems with end-to-end bandit feedback. In such systems, each job needs to go through multiple stages, each managed by a different agent, before generating an outcome. Each agent can only control its own…

Classic no-regret multi-armed bandit algorithms, including the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB), Hedge, and EXP3, are inherently unfair by design. Their unfairness stems from their objective of playing the most rewarding arm as frequently as…

I present the first algorithm for stochastic finite-armed bandits that simultaneously enjoys order-optimal problem-dependent regret and worst-case regret. Besides the theoretical results, the new algorithm is simple, efficient and…

Originally motivated by default risk management applications, this paper investigates a novel problem, referred to as the profitable bandit problem here. At each step, an agent chooses a subset of the K possible actions. For each action…

We consider Bayesian optimization using Gaussian Process models, also referred to as kernel-based bandit optimization. We study the methodology of exploring the domain using random samples drawn from a distribution. We show that this random…

Multi-armed bandit problems are considered as a paradigm of the trade-off between exploring the environment to find profitable actions and exploiting what is already known. In the stationary case, the distributions of the rewards do not…

We study a class of adversarial bandit optimization problems in which the loss functions may be non-convex and non-smooth. In each round, the learner observes a loss that consists of an underlying linear component together with an…

We consider a continuous-time multi-arm bandit problem (CTMAB), where the learner can sample arms any number of times in a given interval and obtain a random reward from each sample, however, increasing the frequency of sampling incurs an…

This work addresses a version of the two-armed Bernoulli bandit problem where the sum of the means of the arms is one (the symmetric two-armed Bernoulli bandit). In a regime where the gap between these means goes to zero as the number of…

In the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem, there is a given set of arms with unknown reward models. At each time, a player selects one arm to play, aiming to maximize the total expected reward over a horizon of length T. An approach based on…

Many applications require optimizing an unknown, noisy function that is expensive to evaluate. We formalize this task as a multi-armed bandit problem, where the payoff function is either sampled from a Gaussian process (GP) or has low RKHS…

Consider a multi-phase project management problem where the decision maker needs to deal with two issues: (a) how to allocate resources to projects within each phase, and (b) when to enter the next phase, so that the total expected reward…

In this paper we propose a general methodology to derive regret bounds for randomized multi-armed bandit algorithms. It consists in checking a set of sufficient conditions on the sampling probability of each arm and on the family of…

The Combinatorial Multi-Armed Bandit problem is a sequential decision-making problem in which an agent selects a set of arms on each round, observes feedback for each of these arms and aims to maximize a known reward function of the arms it…

We study a new type of K-armed bandit problem where the expected return of one arm may depend on the returns of other arms. We present a new algorithm for this general class of problems and show that under certain circumstances it is…

We study regret minimization in a stochastic multi-armed bandit setting and establish a fundamental trade-off between the regret suffered under an algorithm, and its statistical robustness. Considering broad classes of underlying arms'…

In multi-armed bandits, the tasks of reward maximization and pure exploration are often at odds with each other. The former focuses on exploiting arms with the highest means, while the latter may require constant exploration across all…