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We provide a simple method to combine stochastic bandit algorithms. Our approach is based on a "meta-UCB" procedure that treats each of $N$ individual bandit algorithms as arms in a higher-level $N$-armed bandit problem that we solve with a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Ashok Cutkosky , Abhimanyu Das , Manish Purohit

We study pure exploration with infinitely many bandit arms generated i.i.d. from an unknown distribution. Our goal is to efficiently select a single high quality arm whose average reward is, with probability $1-\delta$, within $\varepsilon$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-06 Xiao-Yue Gong , Mark Sellke

We study the fixed-budget best-arm identification (BAI) problem in non-stationary linear bandits. Concretely, given a fixed time budget $T\in \mathbb{N}$, finite arm set $\mathcal{X} \subset \mathbb{R}^d$, and a potentially adversarial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-12 Leo Maynard-Zhang , Zhihan Xiong , Kevin Jamieson , Maryam Fazel

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

Combinatorial Multi-Armed Bandit with fairness constraints is a framework where multiple arms form a super arm and can be pulled in each round under uncertainty to maximize cumulative rewards while ensuring the minimum average reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-14 Xiaoyi Wu , Bo Ji , Bin Li

In the contextual linear bandit setting, algorithms built on the optimism principle fail to exploit the structure of the problem and have been shown to be asymptotically suboptimal. In this paper, we follow recent approaches of deriving…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-23 Andrea Tirinzoni , Matteo Pirotta , Marcello Restelli , Alessandro Lazaric

We study the problem of best arm identification in linear bandits in the fixed-budget setting. By leveraging properties of the G-optimal design and incorporating it into the arm allocation rule, we design a parameter-free algorithm, Optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-22 Junwen Yang , Vincent Y. F. Tan

We consider the question introduced by \cite{Mason2020} of identifying all the $\varepsilon$-optimal arms in a finite stochastic multi-armed bandit with Gaussian rewards. We give two lower bounds on the sample complexity of any algorithm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-07 Aymen Al Marjani , Tomáš Kocák , Aurélien Garivier

We propose a novel technique for analyzing adaptive sampling called the {\em Simulator}. Our approach differs from the existing methods by considering not how much information could be gathered by any fixed sampling strategy, but how…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-25 Max Simchowitz , Kevin Jamieson , Benjamin Recht

We study a novel pure exploration problem: the $\epsilon$-Thresholding Bandit Problem (TBP) with fixed confidence in stochastic linear bandits. We prove a lower bound for the sample complexity and extend an algorithm designed for Best Arm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-16 Eduardo Ochoa Rivera , Ambuj Tewari

We study a novel multi-armed bandit problem that models the challenge faced by a company wishing to explore new strategies to maximize revenue whilst simultaneously maintaining their revenue above a fixed baseline, uniformly over time.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-02-16 Yifan Wu , Roshan Shariff , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvári

We study the fixed-confidence best-arm identification problem in unimodal bandits, in which the means of the arms increase with the index of the arm up to their maximum, then decrease. We derive two lower bounds on the stopping time of any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Riccardo Poiani , Marc Jourdan , Emilie Kaufmann , Rémy Degenne

We study a multi-objective pure exploration problem in a multi-armed bandit model. Each arm is associated to an unknown multi-variate distribution and the goal is to identify the distributions whose mean is not uniformly worse than that of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-15 Cyrille Kone , Emilie Kaufmann , Laura Richert

We study the federated pure exploration problem of multi-armed bandits and linear bandits, where $M$ agents cooperatively identify the best arm via communicating with the central server. To enhance the robustness against latency and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-01 Zichen Wang , Chuanhao Li , Chenyu Song , Lianghui Wang , Quanquan Gu , Huazheng Wang

We study the real-valued combinatorial pure exploration of the multi-armed bandit in the fixed-budget setting. We first introduce the Combinatorial Successive Asign (CSA) algorithm, which is the first algorithm that can identify the best…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-16 Shintaro Nakamura , Masashi Sugiyama

This paper considers the problem of maximizing an expectation function over a finite set, or finite-arm bandit problem. We first propose a naive stochastic bandit algorithm for obtaining a probably approximately correct (PAC) solution to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-16 Marie Billaud-Friess , Arthur Macherey , Anthony Nouy , Clémentine Prieur

Fixed-budget best-arm identification (BAI) is a bandit problem where the agent maximizes the probability of identifying the optimal arm within a fixed budget of observations. In this work, we study this problem in the Bayesian setting. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-16 Alexia Atsidakou , Sumeet Katariya , Sujay Sanghavi , Branislav Kveton

We give a new algorithm for best arm identification in linearly parameterised bandits in the fixed confidence setting. The algorithm generalises the well-known LUCB algorithm of Kalyanakrishnan et al. (2012) by playing an arm which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-11 Mohammadi Zaki , Avinash Mohan , Aditya Gopalan

Active learning methods have shown great promise in reducing the number of samples necessary for learning. As automated learning systems are adopted into real-time, real-world decision-making pipelines, it is increasingly important that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Romain Camilleri , Andrew Wagenmaker , Jamie Morgenstern , Lalit Jain , Kevin Jamieson

In this paper, we introduce a multi-armed bandit problem termed max-min grouped bandits, in which the arms are arranged in possibly-overlapping groups, and the goal is to find the group whose worst arm has the highest mean reward. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-16 Zhenlin Wang , Jonathan Scarlett