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The sample mean is among the most well studied estimators in statistics, having many desirable properties such as unbiasedness and consistency. However, when analyzing data collected using a multi-armed bandit (MAB) experiment, the sample…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-05-03 Jaehyeok Shin , Aaditya Ramdas , Alessandro Rinaldo

In several applications such as clinical trials and financial portfolio optimization, the expected value (or the average reward) does not satisfactorily capture the merits of a drug or a portfolio. In such applications, risk plays a crucial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-13 Vincent Y. F. Tan , Prashanth L. A. , Krishna Jagannathan

Adversarial attacks against stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms have been extensively studied in the literature. In this work, we focus on reward poisoning attacks and find most existing attacks can be easily detected by our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Zhiwei Wang , Huazheng Wang , Hongning Wang

Stochastic multi-armed bandits solve the Exploration-Exploitation dilemma and ultimately maximize the expected reward. Nonetheless, in many practical problems, maximizing the expected reward is not the most desirable objective. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-01-10 Amir Sani , Alessandro Lazaric , Rémi Munos

The stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a common model for sequential decision problems. In the standard setup, a decision maker has to choose at every instant between several competing arms, each of them provides a scalar random…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-27 Asaf Cassel , Shie Mannor , Assaf Zeevi

The batched multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, in which rewards are collected in batches, is crucial for applications such as clinical trials. Existing research predominantly assumes light-tailed reward distributions, yet many real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Yunwen Guo , Yunlun Shu , Gongyi Zhuo , Tianyu Wang

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

We study the stochastic Budgeted Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem, where a player chooses from $K$ arms with unknown expected rewards and costs. The goal is to maximize the total reward under a budget constraint. A player thus seeks to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-16 Marco Heyden , Vadim Arzamasov , Edouard Fouché , Klemens Böhm

The best arm identification problem in the multi-armed bandit setting is an excellent model of many real-world decision-making problems, yet it fails to capture the fact that in the real-world, safety constraints often must be met while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-25 Zhenlin Wang , Andrew Wagenmaker , Kevin Jamieson

In bandit best-arm identification, an algorithm is tasked with finding the arm with highest mean reward with a specified accuracy as fast as possible. We study multi-fidelity best-arm identification, in which the algorithm can choose to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Riccardo Poiani , Rémy Degenne , Emilie Kaufmann , Alberto Maria Metelli , Marcello Restelli

In this paper, we consider a new Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem where arms are nodes in an unknown and possibly changing graph, and the agent (i) initiates random walks over the graph by pulling arms, (ii) observes the random walk…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-28 Tianyu Wang , Lin F. Yang , Zizhuo Wang

We propose a generalization of the best arm identification problem in stochastic multi-armed bandits (MAB) to the setting where every pull of an arm is associated with delayed feedback. The delay in feedback increases the effective sample…

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-12-25 Yahel David , Nahum Shimkin

In this paper, we consider stochastic multi-armed bandits (MABs) with heavy-tailed rewards, whose $p$-th moment is bounded by a constant $\nu_{p}$ for $1<p\leq2$. First, we propose a novel robust estimator which does not require $\nu_{p}$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Kyungjae Lee , Hongjun Yang , Sungbin Lim , Songhwai Oh

This paper introduces a general framework for risk-sensitive bandits that integrates the notions of risk-sensitive objectives by adopting a rich class of distortion riskmetrics. The introduced framework subsumes the various existing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-13 Meltem Tatlı , Arpan Mukherjee , Prashanth L. A. , Karthikeyan Shanmugam , Ali Tajer

This paper investigates the problem of best arm identification in $\textit{contaminated}$ stochastic multi-arm bandits. In this setting, the rewards obtained from any arm are replaced by samples from an adversarial model with probability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-16 Arpan Mukherjee , Ali Tajer , Pin-Yu Chen , Payel Das

Motivated by the task of hyperparameter optimization, we introduce the non-stochastic best-arm identification problem. Within the multi-armed bandit literature, the cumulative regret objective enjoys algorithms and analyses for both the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-03-02 Kevin Jamieson , Ameet Talwalkar

Recently multi-armed bandit problem arises in many real-life scenarios where arms must be sampled in batches, due to limited time the agent can wait for the feedback. Such applications include biological experimentation and online…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-12-22 Shengyu Cao , Simai He , Ruoqing Jiang , Jin Xu , Hongsong Yuan

We propose a multi-agent multi-armed bandit (MA-MAB) framework aimed at ensuring fair outcomes across agents while maximizing overall system performance. A key challenge in this setting is decision-making under limited information about arm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-28 Tianyi Xu , Jiaxin Liu , Nicholas Mattei , Zizhan Zheng

A standard assumption adopted in the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework is that the mean rewards are constant over time. This assumption can be restrictive in the business world as decision-makers often face an evolving environment where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Ningyuan Chen , Chun Wang , Longlin Wang