Related papers: A PAC algorithm in relative precision for bandit p…
We consider the Max $K$-Armed Bandit problem, where a learning agent is faced with several stochastic arms, each a source of i.i.d. rewards of unknown distribution. At each time step the agent chooses an arm, and observes the reward of the…
We consider the Max $K$-Armed Bandit problem, where a learning agent is faced with several sources (arms) of items (rewards), and interested in finding the best item overall. At each time step the agent chooses an arm, and obtains a random…
We consider the problem of near-optimal arm identification in the fixed confidence setting of the infinitely armed bandit problem when nothing is known about the arm reservoir distribution. We (1) introduce a PAC-like framework within which…
We analytically derive a class of optimal solutions to a linear program (LP) for automated mechanism design that satisfies efficiency, incentive compatibility, strong budget balance (SBB), and individual rationality (IR), where SBB and IR…
In the stochastic contextual bandit setting, regret-minimizing algorithms have been extensively researched, but their instance-minimizing best-arm identification counterparts remain seldom studied. In this work, we focus on the stochastic…
This paper studies the problem of adaptively sampling from K distributions (arms) in order to identify the largest gap between any two adjacent means. We call this the MaxGap-bandit problem. This problem arises naturally in approximate…
We study the problem of best-arm identification with fixed confidence in stochastic linear bandits. The objective is to identify the best arm with a given level of certainty while minimizing the sampling budget. We devise a simple algorithm…
We study the algorithm configuration (AC) problem, in which one seeks to find an optimal parameter configuration of a given target algorithm in an automated way. Recently, there has been significant progress in designing AC approaches that…
We propose the first fully-adaptive algorithm for pure exploration in linear bandits---the task to find the arm with the largest expected reward, which depends on an unknown parameter linearly. While existing methods partially or entirely…
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.…
This paper studies a multi-armed bandit (MAB) version of the range-searching problem. In its basic form, range searching considers as input a set of points (on the real line) and a collection of (real) intervals. Here, with each specified…
In this paper, we analyze the continuous armed bandit problems for nonconvex cost functions under certain smoothness and sublevel set assumptions. We first derive an upper bound on the expected cumulative regret of a simple bin splitting…
We consider the problem of identifying any $k$ out of the best $m$ arms in an $n$-armed stochastic multi-armed bandit. Framed in the PAC setting, this particular problem generalises both the problem of `best subset selection' and that of…
We study the best-arm identification problem in multi-armed bandits with stochastic, potentially private rewards, when the goal is to identify the arm with the highest quantile at a fixed, prescribed level. First, we propose a (non-private)…
We introduce vector optimization problems with stochastic bandit feedback, in which preferences among designs are encoded by a polyhedral ordering cone $C$. Our setup generalizes the best arm identification problem to vector-valued rewards…
This paper studies the problem of identifying any $k$ distinct arms among the top $\rho$ fraction (e.g., top 5\%) of arms from a finite or infinite set with a probably approximately correct (PAC) tolerance $\epsilon$. We consider two cases:…
PAC-Bayes has recently re-emerged as an effective theory with which one can derive principled learning algorithms with tight performance guarantees. However, applications of PAC-Bayes to bandit problems are relatively rare, which is a great…
Elimination algorithms for bandit identification, which prune the plausible correct answers sequentially until only one remains, are computationally convenient since they reduce the problem size over time. However, existing elimination…
Decision making under uncertain environments in the maximization of expected reward while minimizing its risk is one of the ubiquitous problems in many subjects. Here, we introduce a novel problem setting in stochastic bandit optimization…
This paper proposes near-optimal algorithms for the pure-exploration linear bandit problem in the fixed confidence and fixed budget settings. Leveraging ideas from the theory of suprema of empirical processes, we provide an algorithm whose…