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Motivated by the cost heterogeneity in experimentation across different alternatives, we study the Best Arm Identification with Resource Constraints (BAIwRC) problem. The agent aims to identify the best arm under resource constraints, where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Zitian Li , Wang Chi Cheung

The paper proposes a novel upper confidence bound (UCB) procedure for identifying the arm with the largest mean in a multi-armed bandit game in the fixed confidence setting using a small number of total samples. The procedure cannot be…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-12-30 Kevin Jamieson , Matthew Malloy , Robert Nowak , Sébastien Bubeck

We study the fixed-confidence best arm identification (BAI) problem within the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework under the Entropic Value-at-Risk (EVaR) criterion. Our analysis considers a nonparametric setting, allowing for general reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Mehrasa Ahmadipour , Aurélien Garivier

We propose a new problem setting to study the sequential interactions between a recommender system and a user. Instead of assuming the user is omniscient, static, and explicit, as the classical practice does, we sketch a more realistic user…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-08 Fan Yao , Chuanhao Li , Denis Nekipelov , Hongning Wang , Haifeng Xu

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the problem of Best Arm Retention (BAR), which has recently found applications in streaming algorithms for multi-armed bandits. In the BAR problem, the goal is to retain $m$ arms with the best…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-17 Houshuang Chen , Yuchen He , Chihao Zhang

This paper considers the problem of minimizing the time average of a controlled stochastic process subject to multiple time average constraints on other related processes. The probability distribution of the random events in the system is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-12-20 Xiaohan Wei , Hao Yu , Michael J. Neely

The stochastic multi-arm bandit problem has been extensively studied under standard assumptions on the arm's distribution (e.g bounded with known support, exponential family, etc). These assumptions are suitable for many real-world problems…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-11-19 Dorian Baudry , Patrick Saux , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-14 Arpan Mukherjee , Shashanka Ubaru , Keerthiram Murugesan , Karthikeyan Shanmugam , Ali Tajer

This study investigates an asymptotically locally minimax optimal algorithm for fixed-budget best-arm identification (BAI). We propose the Generalized Neyman Allocation (GNA) algorithm and demonstrate that its worst-case upper bound on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-04 Masahiro Kato

We study a regret minimization problem with the existence of multiple best/near-optimal arms in the multi-armed bandit setting. We consider the case when the number of arms/actions is comparable or much larger than the time horizon, and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-23 Yinglun Zhu , Robert Nowak

The prior independent framework for algorithm design considers how well an algorithm that does not know the distribution of its inputs approximates the expected performance of the optimal algorithm for this distribution. This paper gives a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Jason Hartline , Aleck Johnsen

Motion planning under differential constraints is a classic problem in robotics. To date, the state of the art is represented by sampling-based techniques, with the Rapidly-exploring Random Tree algorithm as a leading example. Yet, the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2015-03-03 Edward Schmerling , Lucas Janson , Marco Pavone

In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm for the minimum dominating set problem. For some especial networks, we prove theoretically that the achieved answer by our proposed algorithm is a constant approximation factor of the exact…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-01-05 Sharareh Alipour , Ehsan Futuhi , Shayan Karimi

We study a grouped bandit setting where each arm comprises multiple independent sub-arms referred to as attributes. Each attribute of each arm has an independent stochastic reward. We impose the constraint that for an arm to be deemed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-12 Sahil Dharod , Malyala Preethi Sravani , Sakshi Heda , Sharayu Moharir

In this paper, we study a best arm identification problem with dual objects. In addition to the classic reward, each arm is associated with a cost distribution and the goal is to identify the largest reward arm using the minimum expected…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-02 Kellen Kanarios , Qining Zhang , Lei Ying

We establish optimal Statistical Query (SQ) lower bounds for robustly learning certain families of discrete high-dimensional distributions. In particular, we show that no efficient SQ algorithm with access to an $\epsilon$-corrupted binary…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-06-10 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Yuxin Sun

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-02 Chao Tao , Qin Zhang , Yuan Zhou

In contrast to the advances in characterizing the sample complexity for solving Markov decision processes (MDPs), the optimal statistical complexity for solving constrained MDPs (CMDPs) remains unknown. We resolve this question by providing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Sharan Vaswani , Lin F. Yang , Csaba Szepesvári

We present a provably optimal differentially private algorithm for the stochastic multi-arm bandit problem, as opposed to the private analogue of the UCB-algorithm [Mishra and Thakurta, 2015; Tossou and Dimitrakakis, 2016] which doesn't…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-05-24 Touqir Sajed , Or Sheffet

We provide a tight bound on the amount of experimentation under the optimal strategy in sequential decision problems. We show the applicability of the result by providing a bound on the cut-off in a one-arm bandit problem.

Probability · Mathematics 2009-07-14 Dinah Rosenberg , Eilon Solan , Nicolas Vieille