Related papers: An Asymptotically Optimal Strategy for Constrained…
Algorithms for the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem play a central role in sequential decision-making and have been extensively explored both theoretically and numerically. While most classical approaches aim to identify the arm with the…
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…
Consider a requester who wishes to crowdsource a series of identical binary labeling tasks to a pool of workers so as to achieve an assured accuracy for each task, in a cost optimal way. The workers are heterogeneous with unknown but fixed…
This paper presents a class of Dynamic Multi-Armed Bandit problems where the reward can be modeled as the noisy output of a time varying linear stochastic dynamic system that satisfies some boundedness constraints. The class allows many…
We consider the best arm identification problem in the stochastic multi-armed bandit framework where each arm has a tiny probability of realizing large rewards while with overwhelming probability the reward is zero. A key application of…
We present the first high-probability optimal regret bound for a policy optimization technique applied to the problem of stochastic contextual multi-armed bandit (CMAB) with general offline function approximation. Our algorithm is both…
This paper studies a sequential decision problem where payoff distributions are known and where the riskiness of payoffs matters. Equivalently, it studies sequential choice from a repeated set of independent lotteries. The decision-maker is…
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…
We consider the thresholding bandit problem, whose goal is to find arms of mean rewards above a given threshold $\theta$, with a fixed budget of $T$ trials. We introduce LSA, a new, simple and anytime algorithm that aims to minimize the…
We study the nonstationary stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem in which the distribution of rewards associated with each arm are assumed to be time-varying and the total variation in the expected rewards is subject to a variation…
Decision making under uncertain environments in the maximization of expected reward while minimizing its risk is one of the ubiquitous problems in many subjects. Here, we introduce a novel problem setting in stochastic bandit optimization…
The classic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem tackles the challenge of accruing maximum reward while making decisions under uncertainty. However, in applications, often the goal is to minimize cost subject to a constraint on the minimum…
Multi-player multi-armed bandit is an increasingly relevant decision-making problem, motivated by applications to cognitive radio systems. Most research for this problem focuses exclusively on the settings that players have \textit{full…
In a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem a gambler needs to choose at each round of play one of K arms, each characterized by an unknown reward distribution. Reward realizations are only observed when an arm is selected, and the gambler's…
We address the problem of finding the maximizer of a nonlinear smooth function, that can only be evaluated point-wise, subject to constraints on the number of permitted function evaluations. This problem is also known as fixed-budget best…
The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is an active learning framework that aims to select the best among a set of actions by sequentially observing rewards. Recently, it has become popular for a number of applications over wireless networks,…
We consider a multi-armed bandit problem motivated by situations where only the extreme values, as opposed to expected values in the classical bandit setting, are of interest. We propose distribution free algorithms using robust statistics…
Restless bandit problems are instances of non-stationary multi-armed bandits. These problems have been studied well from the optimization perspective, where the goal is to efficiently find a near-optimal policy when system parameters are…
Originally motivated by default risk management applications, this paper investigates a novel problem, referred to as the profitable bandit problem here. At each step, an agent chooses a subset of the K possible actions. For each action…
We consider the problem of \textit{best arm identification} with a \textit{fixed budget $T$}, in the $K$-armed stochastic bandit setting, with arms distribution defined on $[0,1]$. We prove that any bandit strategy, for at least one bandit…