Related papers: Gittins' theorem under uncertainty
Multi-armed bandit problems are the predominant theoretical model of exploration-exploitation tradeoffs in learning, and they have countless applications ranging from medical trials, to communication networks, to Web search and advertising.…
We study the problem of minimising regret in two-armed bandit problems with Gaussian rewards. Our objective is to use this simple setting to illustrate that strategies based on an exploration phase (up to a stopping time) followed by…
We introduce the notion of fault tolerant mechanism design, which extends the standard game theoretic framework of mechanism design to allow for uncertainty about execution. Specifically, we define the problem of task allocation in which…
The Gittins policy is a highly general scheduling policy that minimizes a wide variety of mean holding cost metrics in the M/G/1 queue. Perhaps most famously, Gittins minimizes mean response time in the M/G/1 when jobs' service times are…
This paper addresses the exploration-exploitation dilemma inherent in decision-making, focusing on multi-armed bandit problems. The problems involve an agent deciding whether to exploit current knowledge for immediate gains or explore new…
Information and free-energy maximization are physics principles that provide general rules for an agent to optimize actions in line with specific goals and policies. These principles are the building blocks for designing decision-making…
In restless bandits, a central agent is tasked with optimally distributing limited resources across several bandits (arms), with each arm being a Markov decision process. In this work, we generalize the traditional restless bandits problem…
This study investigates the problem of $K$-armed linear contextual bandits, an instance of the multi-armed bandit problem, under an adversarial corruption. At each round, a decision-maker observes an independent and identically distributed…
The Greedy algorithm is the simplest heuristic in sequential decision problem that carelessly takes the locally optimal choice at each round, disregarding any advantages of exploring and/or information gathering. Theoretically, it is known…
Multi-armed bandit algorithms have become a reference solution for handling the explore/exploit dilemma in recommender systems, and many other important real-world problems, such as display advertisement. However, such algorithms usually…
This research considers the ranking and selection with input uncertainty. The objective is to maximize the posterior probability of correctly selecting the best alternative under a fixed simulation budget, where each alternative is measured…
We study the problem of repeated two-sided matching with uncertain preferences (two-sided bandits), and no explicit communication between agents. Recent work has developed algorithms that converge to stable matchings when one side (the…
The improving multi-armed bandits problem is a formal model for allocating effort under uncertainty, motivated by scenarios such as investing research effort into new technologies, performing clinical trials, and hyperparameter selection…
Motivated by the study of asymptotic behaviour of the bandit problems, we obtain several strategy-driven limit theorems including the law of large numbers, the large deviation principle, and the central limit theorem. Different from the…
In machine learning, the notion of multi-armed bandits refers to a class of online learning problems, in which an agent is supposed to simultaneously explore and exploit a given set of choice alternatives in the course of a sequential…
Experimental design is an approach for selecting samples among a given set so as to obtain the best estimator for a given criterion. In the context of linear regression, several optimal designs have been derived, each associated with a…
We consider a hidden-action principal-agent model, in which actions require different amounts of effort, and the agent privately knows his ability that determines his cost of effort. We show that linear contracts admit approximation…
We study the Improving Multi-Armed Bandit (IMAB) problem, where the reward obtained from an arm increases with the number of pulls it receives. This model provides an elegant abstraction for many real-world problems in domains such as…
Best arm identification (or, pure exploration) in multi-armed bandits is a fundamental problem in machine learning. In this paper we study the distributed version of this problem where we have multiple agents, and they want to learn the…
A sampling-based method is introduced to approximate the Gittins index for a general family of alternative bandit processes. The approximation consists of a truncation of the optimization horizon and support for the immediate rewards, an…