Related papers: Pure Exploration with Multiple Correct Answers
We consider a bandit optimization problem for nonconvex and non-smooth functions, where in each trial the loss function is the sum of a linear function and a small but arbitrary perturbation chosen after observing the player's choice. We…
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…
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 the challenging exploration incentive problem in both bandit and reinforcement learning, where the rewards are scale-free and potentially unbounded, driven by real-world scenarios and differing from existing work. Past works in…
In the Best-$k$-Arm problem, we are given $n$ stochastic bandit arms, each associated with an unknown reward distribution. We are required to identify the $k$ arms with the largest means by taking as few samples as possible. In this paper,…
We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with non-equivalent multiple plays where, at each step, an agent chooses not only a set of arms, but also their order, which influences reward distribution. In several problem formulations…
Online learning algorithms, widely used to power search and content optimization on the web, must balance exploration and exploitation, potentially sacrificing the experience of current users in order to gain information that will lead to…
Entropy maximization and free energy minimization are general physical principles for modeling the dynamics of various physical systems. Notable examples include modeling decision-making within the brain using the free-energy principle,…
We study contextual bandits in the stochastic i.i.d.\ setting, where a learner observes contexts drawn from an unknown distribution, selects actions from a finite set $A$, and aims to identify an approximately optimal policy from a given…
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,…
In this paper, we introduce the constrained best mixed arm identification (CBMAI) problem with a fixed budget. This is a pure exploration problem in a stochastic finite armed bandit model. Each arm is associated with a reward and multiple…
Within the framework of probably approximately correct Markov decision processes (PAC-MDP), much theoretical work has focused on methods to attain near optimality after a relatively long period of learning and exploration. However,…
We study the multi-armed bandit problem with subgaussian rewards. The explore-then-commit (ETC) strategy, which consists of an exploration phase followed by an exploitation phase, is one of the most widely used algorithms in a variety of…
Energy-minimizing constraint maps are a natural extension of the obstacle problem within a vectorial framework. Due to inherent topological constraints, these maps manifest a diverse structure that includes singularities similar to harmonic…
In fixed budget bandit identification, an algorithm sequentially observes samples from several distributions up to a given final time. It then answers a query about the set of distributions. A good algorithm will have a small probability of…
This paper re-examines the use of response time to infer problem complexity. It revisits a canonical Wald model of optimal stopping, taking signal-to-noise ratio as a measure of problem complexity. While choice quality is monotone in…
The best arm identification problem (BEST-1-ARM) is the most basic pure exploration problem in stochastic multi-armed bandits. The problem has a long history and attracted significant attention for the last decade. However, we do not yet…
We give a near-optimal sample-pass trade-off for pure exploration in multi-armed bandits (MABs) via multi-pass streaming algorithms: any streaming algorithm with sublinear memory that uses the optimal sample complexity of…
Model selection in the context of bandit optimization is a challenging problem, as it requires balancing exploration and exploitation not only for action selection, but also for model selection. One natural approach is to rely on online…
The multi-armed bandit problem forms the foundation for solving a wide range of on-line stochastic optimization problems through a simple, yet effective mechanism. One simply casts the problem as a gambler that repeatedly pulls one out of N…