Related papers: Max K-armed bandit: On the ExtremeHunter algorithm…

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…

This paper considers the problem of maximizing an expectation function over a finite set, or finite-arm bandit problem. We first propose a naive stochastic bandit algorithm for obtaining a probably approximately correct (PAC) solution to…

We study MNL bandits, which is a variant of the traditional multi-armed bandit problem, under risk criteria. Unlike the ordinary expected revenue, risk criteria are more general goals widely used in industries and bussiness. We design…

Multi-armed bandits are widely applied in scenarios like recommender systems, for which the goal is to maximize the click rate. However, more factors should be considered, e.g., user stickiness, user growth rate, user experience assessment,…

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…

We address the problem of identifying the optimal policy with a fixed confidence level in a multi-armed bandit setup, when \emph{the arms are subject to linear constraints}. Unlike the standard best-arm identification problem which is well…

Random embedding has been applied with empirical success to large-scale black-box optimization problems with low effective dimensions. This paper proposes the EmbeddedHunter algorithm, which incorporates the technique in a hierarchical…

An extension of the traditional two-armed bandit problem is considered, in which the decision maker has access to some side information before deciding which arm to pull. At each time t, before making a selection, the decision maker is able…

We study the problem of $K$-armed bandits with reward distributions belonging to a one-parameter exponential distribution family. In the literature, several criteria have been proposed to evaluate the performance of such algorithms,…

We consider a bandit problem which involves sequential sampling from two populations (arms). Each arm produces a noisy reward realization which depends on an observable random covariate. The goal is to maximize cumulative expected reward.…

This paper studies the problem of identifying any $k$ distinct arms among the top $\rho$ fraction (e.g., top 5\%) of arms from a finite or infinite set with a probably approximately correct (PAC) tolerance $\epsilon$. We consider two cases:…

This paper considers a multi-armed bandit game where the number of arms is much larger than the maximum budget and is effectively infinite. We characterize necessary and sufficient conditions on the total budget for an algorithm to return…

Recently, bandit optimization has received significant attention in real-world safety-critical systems that involve repeated interactions with humans. While there exist various algorithms with performance guarantees in the literature,…

We consider the multi armed bandit problem in non-stationary environments. Based on the Bayesian method, we propose a variant of Thompson Sampling which can be used in both rested and restless bandit scenarios. Applying discounting to the…

We consider a multi-armed bandit setting with finitely many arms, in which each arm yields an $M$-dimensional vector reward upon selection. We assume that the reward of each dimension (a.k.a. {\em objective}) is generated independently of…

The PhD thesis of Maillard (2013) presents a rather obscure algorithm for the $K$-armed bandit problem. This less-known algorithm, which we call Maillard sampling (MS), computes the probability of choosing each arm in a \textit{closed…

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 study the problem of stochastic combinatorial pure exploration (CPE), where an agent sequentially pulls a set of single arms (a.k.a. a super arm) and tries to find the best super arm. Among a variety of problem settings of the CPE, we…

We study the best-arm identification problem in multi-armed bandits with stochastic, potentially private rewards, when the goal is to identify the arm with the highest quantile at a fixed, prescribed level. First, we propose a (non-private)…

Pure exploration in multi-armed bandits has emerged as an important framework for modeling decision-making and search under uncertainty. In modern applications, however, one is often faced with a tremendously large number of options. Even…