English
Related papers

Related papers: Blocking Bandits

200 papers

We present a formal model of human decision-making in explore-exploit tasks using the context of multi-armed bandit problems, where the decision-maker must choose among multiple options with uncertain rewards. We address the standard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-23 Paul Reverdy , Vaibhav Srivastava , Naomi E. Leonard

In multi-armed bandit problems, the typical goal is to identify the arm with the highest reward. This paper explores a threshold-based bandit problem, aiming to select an arm based on its relation to a prescribed threshold \(\tau \). We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Chanakya Varude , Jay Chaudhary , Siddharth Kaushik , Prasanna Chaporkar

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

In this paper, we consider a bandit problem in which there are a number of groups each consisting of infinitely many arms. Whenever a new arm is requested from a given group, its mean reward is drawn from an unknown reservoir distribution…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-02 Ivan Lau , Yan Hao Ling , Mayank Shrivastava , Jonathan Scarlett

We study adversarial attacks that manipulate the reward signals to control the actions chosen by a stochastic multi-armed bandit algorithm. We propose the first attack against two popular bandit algorithms: $\epsilon$-greedy and UCB,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-30 Kwang-Sung Jun , Lihong Li , Yuzhe Ma , Xiaojin Zhu

This paper is in the field of stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits (MABs), i.e. those sequential selection techniques able to learn online using only the feedback given by the chosen option (a.k.a. $arm$). We study a particular case of the rested…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-28 Marco Fiandri , Alberto Maria Metelli , Francesco Trov`o

Learning preferences implicit in the choices humans make is a well studied problem in both economics and computer science. However, most work makes the assumption that humans are acting (noisily) optimally with respect to their preferences.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-28 Lawrence Chan , Dylan Hadfield-Menell , Siddhartha Srinivasa , Anca Dragan

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-11 Omar Besbes , Yonatan Gur , Assaf Zeevi

Many real-world functions are defined over both categorical and category-specific continuous variables and thus cannot be optimized by traditional Bayesian optimization (BO) methods. To optimize such functions, we propose a new method that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-02 Dang Nguyen , Sunil Gupta , Santu Rana , Alistair Shilton , Svetha Venkatesh

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-22 Vishakha Patil , Vineet Nair , Ganesh Ghalme , Arindam Khan

Motivated by distributed selection problems, we formulate a new variant of multi-player multi-armed bandit (MAB) model, which captures stochastic arrival of requests to each arm, as well as the policy of allocating requests to players. The…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-08-21 Hong Xie , Jinyu Mo , Defu Lian , Jie Wang , Enhong Chen

We study a strategic version of the multi-armed bandit problem, where each arm is an individual strategic agent and we, the principal, pull one arm each round. When pulled, the arm receives some private reward $v_a$ and can choose an amount…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-07-03 Mark Braverman , Jieming Mao , Jon Schneider , S. Matthew Weinberg

Psychological research shows that enjoyment of many goods is subject to satiation, with short-term satisfaction declining after repeated exposures to the same item. Nevertheless, proposed algorithms for powering recommender systems seldom…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Liu Leqi , Fatma Kilinc-Karzan , Zachary C. Lipton , Alan L. Montgomery

We consider a multi-armed bandit problem in which a set of arms is registered by each agent, and the agent receives reward when its arm is selected. An agent might strategically submit more arms with replications, which can bring more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Suho Shin , Seungjoon Lee , Jungseul Ok

We study the problem of corralling stochastic bandit algorithms, that is combining multiple bandit algorithms designed for a stochastic environment, with the goal of devising a corralling algorithm that performs almost as well as the best…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Raman Arora , Teodor V. Marinov , Mehryar Mohri

Motivated by models of human decision making proposed to explain commonly observed deviations from conventional expected value preferences, we formulate two stochastic multi-armed bandit problems with distorted probabilities on the reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Ravi Kumar Kolla , Prashanth L. A. , Aditya Gopalan , Krishna Jagannathan , Michael Fu , Steve Marcus

The contextual bandit literature has traditionally focused on algorithms that address the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. In particular, greedy algorithms that exploit current estimates without any exploration may be sub-optimal in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-04-21 Hamsa Bastani , Mohsen Bayati , Khashayar Khosravi

We propose $\tt RandUCB$, a bandit strategy that builds on theoretically derived confidence intervals similar to upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithms, but akin to Thompson sampling (TS), it uses randomization to trade off exploration and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-24 Sharan Vaswani , Abbas Mehrabian , Audrey Durand , Branislav Kveton

We consider a finite-armed structured bandit problem in which mean rewards of different arms are known functions of a common hidden parameter $\theta^*$. Since we do not place any restrictions of these functions, the problem setting…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-04 Samarth Gupta , Shreyas Chaudhari , Subhojyoti Mukherjee , Gauri Joshi , Osman Yağan

We consider a combinatorial generalization of the classical multi-armed bandit problem that is defined as follows. There is a given bipartite graph of $M$ users and $N \geq M$ resources. For each user-resource pair $(i,j)$, there is an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-03-17 Yi Gai , Bhaskar Krishnamachari , Mingyan Liu