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Related papers: Non-Asymptotic Pure Exploration by Solving Games

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This paper proposes near-optimal algorithms for the pure-exploration linear bandit problem in the fixed confidence and fixed budget settings. Leveraging ideas from the theory of suprema of empirical processes, we provide an algorithm whose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Julian Katz-Samuels , Lalit Jain , Zohar Karnin , Kevin Jamieson

Efficient exploration is one of the main challenges in reinforcement learning (RL). Most existing sample-efficient algorithms assume the existence of a single reward function during exploration. In many practical scenarios, however, there…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-18 Xuezhou Zhang , Yuzhe ma , Adish Singla

In the incentivized exploration model, a principal aims to explore and learn over time by interacting with a sequence of self-interested agents. It has been recently understood that the main challenge in designing incentive-compatible…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Benjamin Schiffer , Mark Sellke

Sample-efficient exploration is crucial not only for discovering rewarding experiences but also for adapting to environment changes in a task-agnostic fashion. A principled treatment of the problem of optimal input synthesis for system…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-10 Matthias Schultheis , Boris Belousov , Hany Abdulsamad , Jan Peters

In this paper, we first study the problem of combinatorial pure exploration with full-bandit feedback (CPE-BL), where a learner is given a combinatorial action space $\mathcal{X} \subseteq \{0,1\}^d$, and in each round the learner pulls an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-16 Yihan Du , Yuko Kuroki , Wei Chen

We consider a multi-armed bandit setting with finitely many arms, in which each arm yields an $M$-dimensional vector reward upon selection. We assume that the reward of each dimension (a.k.a. {\em objective}) is generated independently of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-24 Zhirui Chen , P. N. Karthik , Yeow Meng Chee , Vincent Y. F. Tan

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-26 Kwang-Sung Jun , Chicheng Zhang

We consider two active binary-classification problems with atypical objectives. In the first, active search, our goal is to actively uncover as many members of a given class as possible. In the second, active surveying, our goal is to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-11-11 Roman Garnett , Yamuna Krishnamurthy , Xuehan Xiong , Jeff Schneider , Richard Mann

We study reward-free and reward-agnostic exploration in episodic finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs), where an agent explores an unknown environment without observing external rewards. Reward-free exploration aims to enable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Oran Ridel , Alon Cohen

The optimization of measurement for n samples of pure sates are studied. The error of the optimal measurement for n samples is asymptotically compared with the one of the maximum likelihood estimators from n data given by the optimal…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2008-11-26 Masahito Hayashi

We advance the study of incentivized bandit exploration, in which arm choices are viewed as recommendations and are required to be Bayesian incentive compatible. Recent work has shown under certain independence assumptions that after…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-25 Mark Sellke

Sequential decision tasks with incomplete information are characterized by the exploration problem; namely the trade-off between further exploration for learning more about the environment and immediate exploitation of the accrued…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-02-21 Grigoris I. Karakoulas

Deterministic game-solving algorithms are conventionally analyzed in the light of their average-case complexity against a distribution of random game-trees, where leaf values are independently sampled from a fixed distribution. This…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Raphaël Boige , Amine Boumaza , Bruno Scherrer

Autonomous exploration is a complex task where the robot moves through an unknown environment with the goal of mapping it. The desired output of such a process is a sequence of paths that efficiently and safely minimise the uncertainty of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2018-05-04 Gilad Francis , Lionel Ott , Fabio Ramos

This work introduces an automated testing approach that employs agents controlling game characters to detect potential bugs within a game level. Harnessing the power of Bayesian Optimization (BO) to execute sample-efficient search, the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-08-19 Carlos Celemin

Optimization of expensive computer models with the help of Gaussian process emulators in now commonplace. However, when several (competing) objectives are considered, choosing an appropriate sampling strategy remains an open question. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2013-10-03 Victor Picheny

Motivated by real-world applications such as fast fashion retailing and online advertising, the Multinomial Logit Bandit (MNL-bandit) is a popular model in online learning and operations research, and has attracted much attention in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-17 Nikolai Karpov , Qin Zhang

Safely exploring environments with a-priori unknown constraints is a fundamental challenge that restricts the autonomy of robots. While safety is paramount, guarantees on sufficient exploration are also crucial for ensuring autonomous task…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-06-23 Manish Prajapat , Johannes Köhler , Matteo Turchetta , Andreas Krause , Melanie N. Zeilinger

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-01-02 Zengjing Chen , Larry G. Epstein , Guodong Zhang

We introduce the "inverse bandit" problem of estimating the rewards of a multi-armed bandit instance from observing the learning process of a low-regret demonstrator. Existing approaches to the related problem of inverse reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-02-23 Wenshuo Guo , Kumar Krishna Agrawal , Aditya Grover , Vidya Muthukumar , Ashwin Pananjady