Related papers: Detecting an Odd Restless Markov Arm with a Trembl…

The early sections of this paper present an analysis of a Markov decision model that is known as the multi-armed bandit under the assumption that the utility function of the decision maker is either linear or exponential. The analysis…

A Tree Markov Decision Problem (T-MDP) is a finite-horizon MDP with a starting state $s_{1}$, in which every state is reachable from $s_{1}$ through exactly one state-action trajectory. T-MDPs arise naturally as abstractions of decision…

We study the online restless bandit problem, where the state of each arm evolves according to a Markov chain, and the reward of pulling an arm depends on both the pulled arm and the current state of the corresponding Markov chain. In this…

We consider a decision maker allocating one unit of renewable and divisible resource in each period on a number of arms. The arms have unknown and random rewards whose means are proportional to the allocated resource and whose variances are…

We analyze undiscounted continuous-time games of strategic experimentation with two-armed bandits. The risky arm generates payoffs according to a L\'{e}vy process with an unknown average payoff per unit of time which nature draws from an…

Restless multi-armed bandits (RMABs) generalize the multi-armed bandits where each arm exhibits Markovian behavior and transitions according to their transition dynamics. Solutions to RMAB exist for both offline and online cases. However,…

We consider a multi-hypothesis testing problem involving a K-armed bandit. Each arm's signal follows a distribution from a vector exponential family. The actual parameters of the arms are unknown to the decision maker. The decision maker…

Markov decision processes (MDP) are a well-established model for sequential decision-making in the presence of probabilities. In robust MDP (RMDP), every action is associated with an uncertainty set of probability distributions, modelling…

This paper puts forward the concept that learning to take safe actions in unknown environments, even with probability one guarantees, can be achieved without the need for an unbounded number of exploratory trials. This is indeed possible,…

This paper examines multi-armed bandits in which actions are taken at random discrete times. The model consists of $J$ independent arms. When an arm is operated, it must remain active for a random duration, modeled by the inter-arrival time…

We consider the problem of maximizing the expected average reward obtained over an infinite time horizon by $n$ weakly coupled Markov decision processes. Our setup is a substantial generalization of the multi-armed restless bandit problem…

Motivated by techniques developed in recent progress on lower bounds for sublinear time algorithms (Behnezhad, Roghani and Rubinstein, STOC 2023, FOCS 2023, and STOC 2024) we introduce and study a new class of randomized algorithmic…

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) model is one of the most classical models to study decision-making in an uncertain environment. In this model, a player chooses one of $K$ possible arms of a bandit machine to play at each time step, where the…

This paper addresses an important class of restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problems that finds broad application in operations research, stochastic optimization, and reinforcement learning. There are $N$ independent Markov processes that…

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 Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) framework highlights the tension between acquiring new knowledge (Exploration) and leveraging available knowledge (Exploitation). In the classical MAB problem, a decision maker must choose an arm at each time…

We consider a variant of the multi-armed bandit model, which we call multi-armed bandit problem with known trend, where the gambler knows the shape of the reward function of each arm but not its distribution. This new problem is motivated…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a fundamental model for decision making under uncertainty. They exhibit non-deterministic choice as well as probabilistic uncertainty. Traditionally, verification algorithms assume exact knowledge of the…

Rested and Restless Bandits are two well-known bandit settings that are useful to model real-world sequential decision-making problems in which the expected reward of an arm evolves over time due to the actions we perform or due to the…

While classical formulations of multi-armed bandit problems assume that each arm's reward is independent and stationary, real-world applications often involve non-stationary environments and interdependencies between arms. In particular,…