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Imagine we want to split a group of agents into teams in the most \emph{efficient} way, considering that each agent has their own preferences about their teammates. This scenario is modeled by the extensively studied \textsc{Coalition…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-05-29 Foivos Fioravantes , Harmender Gahlawat , Nikolaos Melissinos

In multi-objective decision-making with hierarchical preferences, lexicographic bandits provide a natural framework for optimizing multiple objectives in a prioritized order. In this setting, a learner repeatedly selects arms and observes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Bo Xue , Yuanyu Wan , Zhichao Lu , Qingfu Zhang

In this work, we address the problem of precisely localizing key frames of an action, for example, the precise time that a pitcher releases a baseball, or the precise time that a crowd begins to applaud. Key frame localization is a largely…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2020-01-22 Iljung S. Kwak , Jian-Zhong Guo , Adam Hantman , David Kriegman , Kristin Branson

We consider a finite-armed structured bandit problem in which mean rewards of different arms are known functions of a common hidden parameter $\theta^*$. Since we do not place any restrictions of these functions, the problem setting…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-04 Samarth Gupta , Shreyas Chaudhari , Subhojyoti Mukherjee , Gauri Joshi , Osman Yağan

Neural networks are hypothesized to implement interpretable causal mechanisms, yet verifying this requires finding a causal abstraction -- a simpler, high-level Structural Causal Model (SCM) faithful to the network under interventions.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Amir Asiaee

This paper proposes a new framework for providing approximation guarantees of local search algorithms. Local search is a basic algorithm design technique and is widely used for various combinatorial optimization problems. To analyze local…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-06-03 Kaito Fujii

We introduce the safe best-arm identification framework with linear feedback, where the agent is subject to some stage-wise safety constraint that linearly depends on an unknown parameter vector. The agent must take actions in a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-09-19 Xuedong Shang , Igor Colin , Merwan Barlier , Hamza Cherkaoui

As the adoption of federated learning increases for learning from sensitive data local to user devices, it is natural to ask if the learning can be done using implicit signals generated as users interact with the applications of interest,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-21 Alekh Agarwal , H. Brendan McMahan , Zheng Xu

We develop a mechanistic dynamical-systems formulation of best response in finite-action games with relational structure on the action set. The proposed neuromorphic decision dynamics realize best response as the stable outcome of an…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2026-05-05 Himani Sinhmar , Vaibhav Srivastava , Naomi Ehrich Leonard

We study the problem of estimating a continuous ability parameter from sequential binary responses by actively asking questions with varying difficulties, a setting that arises naturally in adaptive testing and online preference learning.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-10 Sanghwa Kim , Dohyun Ahn , Seungki Min

This paper introduces alignment games, a new class of zero-sum games modeling strategic interventions where effectiveness depends on alignment with an underlying hidden state. Motivated by operational problems in medical diagnostics,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-08 Pedro Cesar Lopes Gerum , Thomas Lidbetter

We present an algorithm, "constrained successive accept or reject (CSAR)," for the problem of identifying the subset of top feasible-arms from a given finite set of arms with the limited sampling-budget equal to a given time-horizon when…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-22 Hyeong Soo Chang

We investigate the increasingly important and common game-solving setting where we do not have an explicit description of the game but only oracle access to it through gameplay, such as in financial or military simulations and computer…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-02-26 Carlos Martin , Tuomas Sandholm

We study the problem of off-policy evaluation in the multi-armed bandit model with bounded rewards, and develop minimax rate-optimal procedures under three settings. First, when the behavior policy is known, we show that the Switch…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-01-20 Cong Ma , Banghua Zhu , Jiantao Jiao , Martin J. Wainwright

We consider how an agent should update her beliefs when her beliefs are represented by a set P of probability distributions, given that the agent makes decisions using the minimax criterion, perhaps the best-studied and most commonly-used…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-01-17 Peter D Grunwald , Joseph Y Halpern

We consider the problem of multi-fidelity zeroth-order optimization, where one can evaluate a function $f$ at various approximation levels (of varying costs), and the goal is to optimize $f$ with the cheapest evaluations possible. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-14 Étienne de Montbrun , Sébastien Gerchinovitz

We formulate, analyze and solve the problem of best arm identification with fairness constraints on subpopulations (BAICS). Standard best arm identification problems aim at selecting an arm that has the largest expected reward where the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-11 Yuhang Wu , Zeyu Zheng , Tingyu Zhu

We study fixed-confidence best-arm identification (BAI) where a cheap but potentially biased proxy (e.g., LLM judge) is available for every sample, while an expensive ground-truth label can only be acquired selectively when using a human…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Ruicheng Ao , Hongyu Chen , Siyang Gao , Hanwei Li , David Simchi-Levi

What can an agent learn in a stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem from a dataset that contains just a single sample for each arm? Surprisingly, in this work, we demonstrate that even in such a data-starved setting it may still be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-27 Ruiqi Zhang , Yuexiang Zhai , Andrea Zanette

We study the representative arm identification (RAI) problem in the multi-armed bandits (MAB) framework, wherein we have a collection of arms, each associated with an unknown reward distribution. An underlying instance is defined by a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-27 Sarvesh Gharat , Aniket Yadav , Nikhil Karamchandani , Jayakrishnan Nair