Related papers: Sample complexity of partition identification usin…
We consider a bandit problem over a graph where the rewards are not directly observed. Instead, the decision maker can compare two nodes and receive (stochastic) information pertaining to the difference in their value. The graph structure…
The celebrated multi-armed bandit problem in decision theory models the basic trade-off between exploration, or learning about the state of a system, and exploitation, or utilizing the system. In this paper we study the variant of the…
Despite the recent success of representation learning in sequential decision making, the study of the pure exploration scenario (i.e., identify the best option and minimize the sample complexity) is still limited. In this paper, we study…
We consider the decentralized exploration problem: a set of players collaborate to identify the best arm by asynchronously interacting with the same stochastic environment. The objective is to insure privacy in the best arm identification…
We study a novel pure exploration problem: the $\epsilon$-Thresholding Bandit Problem (TBP) with fixed confidence in stochastic linear bandits. We prove a lower bound for the sample complexity and extend an algorithm designed for Best Arm…
We consider incentivized exploration: a version of multi-armed bandits where the choice of arms is controlled by self-interested agents, and the algorithm can only issue recommendations. The algorithm controls the flow of information, and…
We introduce a variant of the classical PAC multi-armed bandit problem. There is an ordered set of $n$ arms $A[1],\dots,A[n]$, each with some stochastic reward drawn from some unknown bounded distribution. The goal is to identify the…
We propose a {\em novel} piecewise stationary linear bandit (PSLB) model, where the environment randomly samples a context from an unknown probability distribution at each changepoint, and the quality of an arm is measured by its return…
We study exploration in stochastic multi-armed bandits when we have access to a divisible resource that can be allocated in varying amounts to arm pulls. We focus in particular on the allocation of distributed computing resources, where we…
In this paper, we study censored Semi-Bandits, a novel variant of the semi-bandits problem. The learner is assumed to have a fixed amount of resources, which it allocates to the arms at each time step. The loss observed from an arm is…
We introduce the Best Group Identification problem in a multi-objective multi-armed bandit setting, where an agent interacts with groups of arms with vector-valued rewards. The performance of a group is determined by an efficiency vector…
This paper introduces the framework of multi-armed sampling, which serves as the sampling counterpart to the optimization problem of multi-armed bandits. Our primary motivation is to rigorously examine the exploration-exploitation trade-off…
In generative models with obscured likelihood, Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) is often the tool of last resort for inference. However, ABC demands many prior parameter trials to keep only a small fraction that passes an acceptance…
We study the problem of identifying the best arm in a multi-armed bandit environment when each arm is a time-homogeneous and ergodic discrete-time Markov process on a common, finite state space. The state evolution on each arm is governed…
We design and analyze CascadeBAI, an algorithm for finding the best set of $K$ items, also called an arm, within the framework of cascading bandits. An upper bound on the time complexity of CascadeBAI is derived by overcoming a crucial…
We consider the problem of finding, through adaptive sampling, which of $n$ options (arms) has the largest mean. Our objective is to determine a rule which identifies the best arm with a fixed minimum confidence using as few observations as…
Motivated by an open direction in existing literature, we study the 1-identification problem, a fundamental multi-armed bandit formulation on pure exploration. The goal is to determine whether there exists an arm whose mean reward is at…
In bandit multiple hypothesis testing, each arm corresponds to a different null hypothesis that we wish to test, and the goal is to design adaptive algorithms that correctly identify large set of interesting arms (true discoveries), while…
This paper considers the problem of combinatorial multi-armed bandits with semi-bandit feedback and a cardinality constraint on the super-arm size. Existing algorithms for solving this problem typically involve two key sub-routines: (1) a…
The classical multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem involves a learner and a collection of K independent arms, each with its own ex ante unknown independent reward distribution. At each one of a finite number of rounds, the learner selects one…