English
Related papers

Related papers: Fully adaptive algorithm for pure exploration in l…

200 papers

We consider a scenario where an agent has multiple available strategies to explore an unknown environment. For each new interaction with the environment, the agent must select which exploration strategy to use. We provide a new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-08-24 Fabien C. Y. Benureau , Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

We consider a multiobjective multiarmed bandit problem with lexicographically ordered objectives. In this problem, the goal of the learner is to select arms that are lexicographic optimal as much as possible without knowing the arm reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-30 Alihan Hüyük , Cem Tekin

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)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-28 Sourav Chakraborty , Amit Kiran Rege , Claire Monteleoni , Lijun Chen

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-02-20 Ananda Narayanan B , Balaraman Ravindran

Online decision-making can be formulated as the popular stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where a learner makes decisions (or takes actions) to maximize cumulative rewards collected from an unknown environment. This paper proposes to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-26 Jonathan Gornet , Mehdi Hosseinzadeh , Bruno Sinopoli

There has been a recent surge of interest in nonparametric bandit algorithms based on subsampling. One drawback however of these approaches is the additional complexity required by random subsampling and the storage of the full history of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-06-22 Dorian Baudry , Yoan Russac , Olivier Cappé

In this paper we consider the contextual multi-armed bandit problem for linear payoffs under a risk-averse criterion. At each round, contexts are revealed for each arm, and the decision maker chooses one arm to pull and receives the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-28 Yifan Lin , Yuhao Wang , Enlu Zhou

We study fixed-confidence Best Arm Identification (BAI) in semiparametric bandits, where rewards are linear in arm features plus an unknown additive baseline shift. Unlike linear-bandit BAI, this setting requires orthogonalized regression,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-07 Seok-Jin Kim

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Mehrasa Ahmadipour , Aurélien Garivier

In many biomedical, science, and engineering problems, one must sequentially decide which action to take next so as to maximize rewards. One general class of algorithms for optimizing interactions with the world, while simultaneously…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-05-05 Iñigo Urteaga , Chris H. Wiggins

We present an efficient and generalised procedure to accurately identify the best (or near best) performing algorithm for each sub-task in a multi-problem domain. Our approach treats this as a set of best arm identification problems for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Matthew Stephenson , Alex Newcombe , Eric Piette , Dennis Soemers

Multi-arm bandits are gaining popularity as they enable real-world sequential decision-making across application areas, including clinical trials, recommender systems, and online decision-making. Consequently, there is an increased desire…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-03-01 Dae Woong Ham , Iavor Bojinov , Michael Lindon , Martin Tingley

We propose a new bootstrap-based online algorithm for stochastic linear bandit problems. The key idea is to adopt residual bootstrap exploration, in which the agent estimates the next step reward by re-sampling the residuals of mean reward…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-06-20 Shuang Wu , Chi-Hua Wang , Yuantong Li , Guang Cheng

We study the fixed-confidence best-arm identification problem in unimodal bandits, in which the means of the arms increase with the index of the arm up to their maximum, then decrease. We derive two lower bounds on the stopping time of any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Riccardo Poiani , Marc Jourdan , Emilie Kaufmann , Rémy Degenne

We give a complete characterization of the complexity of best-arm identification in one-parameter bandit problems. We prove a new, tight lower bound on the sample complexity. We propose the `Track-and-Stop' strategy, which we prove to be…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-06-02 Aurélien Garivier , Emilie Kaufmann

We consider a multi-armed bandit problem in a setting where each arm produces a noisy reward realization which depends on an observable random covariate. As opposed to the traditional static multi-armed bandit problem, this setting allows…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2013-05-27 Vianney Perchet , Philippe Rigollet

We propose a new problem setting to study the sequential interactions between a recommender system and a user. Instead of assuming the user is omniscient, static, and explicit, as the classical practice does, we sketch a more realistic user…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-08 Fan Yao , Chuanhao Li , Denis Nekipelov , Hongning Wang , Haifeng Xu

We consider a stochastic multi-armed bandit setting where reward must be actively queried for it to be observed. We provide tight lower and upper problem-dependent guarantees on both the regret and the number of queries. Interestingly, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-28 Nadav Merlis , Yonathan Efroni , Shie Mannor

In multi-armed bandits, the most-explored arms are the most informative, while reward maximization typically pulls only the best arm. We study the tradeoff between identifying arm means accurately and accumulating reward, and present an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Akram Erraqabi , Alessandro Lazaric , Michal Valko , Emma Brunskill , Yun-En Liu

In a typical stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, the objective is often to maximize the expected sum of rewards over some time horizon $T$. While the choice of a strategy that accomplishes that is optimal with no additional information,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Reda Alami , Mohammed Mahfoud , Mastane Achab