Related papers: An Asymptotically Optimal Strategy for Constrained…
We consider a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with i.i.d. rewards where the expected reward function is multimodal with at most m modes. We propose the first known computationally tractable algorithm for computing the solution to the…
This paper considers the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem and provides a new best-of-both-worlds (BOBW) algorithm that works nearly optimally in both stochastic and adversarial settings. In stochastic settings, some existing BOBW algorithms…
Standard Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problems assume that the arms are independent. However, in many application scenarios, the information obtained by playing an arm provides information about the remainder of the arms. Hence, in such…
We study a novel multi-armed bandit problem that models the challenge faced by a company wishing to explore new strategies to maximize revenue whilst simultaneously maintaining their revenue above a fixed baseline, uniformly over time.…
One of the key drivers of complexity in the classical (stochastic) multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is the difference between mean rewards in the top two arms, also known as the instance gap. The celebrated Upper Confidence Bound (UCB)…
We consider bandit problems involving a large (possibly infinite) collection of arms, in which the expected reward of each arm is a linear function of an $r$-dimensional random vector $\mathbf{Z} \in \mathbb{R}^r$, where $r \geq 2$. The…
We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem where an underlying network structure enables side-observations across related actions. We use a bipartite graph to link actions to a set of unknowns, such that selecting an action…
The multi-armed bandit(MAB) problem is a simple yet powerful framework that has been extensively studied in the context of decision-making under uncertainty. In many real-world applications, such as robotic applications, selecting an arm…
In the multiarmed bandit problem a gambler chooses an arm of a slot machine to pull considering a tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. We study the stochastic bandit problem where each arm has a reward distribution supported in a…
The question of the optimality of Thompson Sampling for solving the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem had been open since 1933. In this paper we answer it positively for the case of Bernoulli rewards by providing the first finite-time…
The purpose of this paper is to provide further understanding into the structure of the sequential allocation ("stochastic multi-armed bandit", or MAB) problem by establishing probability one finite horizon bounds and convergence rates for…
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…
We study stochastic structured bandits for minimizing regret. The fact that the popular optimistic algorithms do not achieve the asymptotic instance-dependent regret optimality (asymptotic optimality for short) has recently alluded…
In the classical multi-armed bandit problem, d arms are available to the decision maker who pulls them sequentially in order to maximize his cumulative reward. Guarantees can be obtained on a relative quantity called regret, which scales…
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…
Multi-armed bandit problems (MABPs) are a special type of optimal control problem well suited to model resource allocation under uncertainty in a wide variety of contexts. Since the first publication of the optimal solution of the classic…
We investigate an active pure-exploration setting, that includes best-arm identification, in the context of linear stochastic bandits. While asymptotically optimal algorithms exist for standard multi-arm bandits, the existence of such…
In a multi-armed bandit problem, an online algorithm chooses from a set of strategies in a sequence of trials so as to maximize the total payoff of the chosen strategies. While the performance of bandit algorithms with a small finite…
The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a classical learning task that exemplifies the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. However, standard formulations do not take into account {\em risk}. In online decision making systems, risk is a…
We study, to the best of our knowledge, the first Bayesian algorithm for unimodal Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problems with graph structure. In this setting, each arm corresponds to a node of a graph and each edge provides a relationship,…