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Multi-armed bandits (MAB) are commonly used in sequential online decision-making when the reward of each decision is an unknown random variable. In practice however, the typical goal of maximizing total reward may be less important than…

In several applications of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, the traditional objective of maximizing the expected total reward can be inappropriate. In this paper, motivated by certain operational concerns in online platforms, we…

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…

The best arm identification problem in the multi-armed bandit setting is an excellent model of many real-world decision-making problems, yet it fails to capture the fact that in the real-world, safety constraints often must be met while…

We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with non-equivalent multiple plays where, at each step, an agent chooses not only a set of arms, but also their order, which influences reward distribution. In several problem formulations…

We consider a budget-constrained bandit problem where each arm pull incurs a random cost, and yields a random reward in return. The objective is to maximize the total expected reward under a budget constraint on the total cost. The model is…

We propose algorithms based on a multi-level Thompson sampling scheme, for the stochastic multi-armed bandit and its contextual variant with linear expected rewards, in the setting where arms are clustered. We show, both theoretically and…

Although the classical version of the Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) framework has been applied successfully to several practical problems, in many real-world applications, the possible actions are not presented to the learner simultaneously,…

Motivated by recommendation problems in music streaming platforms, we propose a nonstationary stochastic bandit model in which the expected reward of an arm depends on the number of rounds that have passed since the arm was last pulled.…

In this paper, we consider the problem of multi-armed bandits with a large, possibly infinite number of correlated arms. We assume that the arms have Bernoulli distributed rewards, independent across time, where the probabilities of success…

The Greedy algorithm is the simplest heuristic in sequential decision problem that carelessly takes the locally optimal choice at each round, disregarding any advantages of exploring and/or information gathering. Theoretically, it is known…

We study the multi-armed bandit problem with arms which are Markov chains with rewards. In the finite-horizon setting, the celebrated Gittins indices do not apply, and the exact solution is intractable. We provide approximation algorithms…

We consider the Max $K$-Armed Bandit problem, where a learning agent is faced with several stochastic arms, each a source of i.i.d. rewards of unknown distribution. At each time step the agent chooses an arm, and observes the reward of the…

We consider the infinite-horizon, average-reward restless bandit problem in discrete time. We propose a new class of policies that are designed to drive a progressively larger subset of arms toward the optimal distribution. We show that our…

We study the fixed-confidence best arm identification (BAI) problem within the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework under the Entropic Value-at-Risk (EVaR) criterion. Our analysis considers a nonparametric setting, allowing for general reward…

Multi-armed bandits are one of the theoretical pillars of reinforcement learning. Recently, the investigation of quantum algorithms for multi-armed bandit problems was started, and it was found that a quadratic speed-up (in query…

Thompson Sampling provides an efficient technique to introduce prior knowledge in the multi-armed bandit problem, along with providing remarkable empirical performance. In this paper, we revisit the Thompson Sampling algorithm under rewards…

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) processes constitute a foundational subclass of reinforcement learning problems and represent a central topic in statistical decision theory, but are limited to simultaneous adaptive allocation and sequential test,…

We consider a multi-armed bandit problem where the decision maker can explore and exploit different arms at every round. The exploited arm adds to the decision maker's cumulative reward (without necessarily observing the reward) while the…

Motivated by applications such as online labor markets we consider a variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where we have a collection of arms representing strategic agents with different performance characteristics. The…