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We define a general framework for a large class of combinatorial multi-armed bandit (CMAB) problems, where subsets of base arms with unknown distributions form super arms. In each round, a super arm is played and the base arms contained in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-03-30 Wei Chen , Yajun Wang , Yang Yuan , Qinshi Wang

Multi-armed bandits (MAB) are commonly used in sequential online decision-making when the reward of each decision is an unknown random variable. In practice however, the typical goal of maximizing total reward may be less important than…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-22 Ishank Juneja , Carlee Joe-Wong , Osman Yağan

In this paper, we study the stochastic combinatorial multi-armed bandit (CMAB) framework that allows a general nonlinear reward function, whose expected value may not depend only on the means of the input random variables but possibly on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-23 Wei Chen , Wei Hu , Fu Li , Jian Li , Yu Liu , Pinyan Lu

We consider the best arm identification (BAI) problem in the $K-$armed bandit framework with a modification - the agent is allowed to play a subset of arms at each time slot instead of one arm. Consequently, the agent observes the sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Siddhartha Parupudi , Gourab Ghatak

Combinatorial online learning is a fundamental task for selecting the optimal action (or super arm) as a combination of base arms in sequential interactions with systems providing stochastic rewards. It is applicable to diverse domains such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Seockbean Song , Youngsik Yoon , Siwei Wang , Wei Chen , Jungseul Ok

Partial monitoring games are repeated games where the learner receives feedback that might be different from adversary's move or even the reward gained by the learner. Recently, a general model of combinatorial partial monitoring (CPM)…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-08-24 Sougata Chaudhuri , Ambuj Tewari

Existing methods of combinatorial pure exploration mainly focus on the UCB approach. To make the algorithm efficient, they usually use the sum of upper confidence bounds within arm set $S$ to represent the upper confidence bound of $S$,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Siwei Wang , Jun Zhu

We propose an online algorithm for cumulative regret minimization in a stochastic multi-armed bandit. The algorithm adds $O(t)$ i.i.d. pseudo-rewards to its history in round $t$ and then pulls the arm with the highest average reward in its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-06 Branislav Kveton , Csaba Szepesvari , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Craig Boutilier

We study the problem active sequential hypothesis testing, also known as pure exploration: given a new task, the learner adaptively collects data from the environment to efficiently determine an underlying correct hypothesis. A classical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Alessio Russo , Ryan Welch , Aldo Pacchiano

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

Despite the close connection between exploration and sample efficiency, most state of the art reinforcement learning algorithms include no considerations for exploration beyond maximizing the entropy of the policy. In this work we address…

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) model has been widely adopted for studying many practical optimization problems (network resource allocation, ad placement, crowdsourcing, etc.) with unknown parameters. The goal of the player here is to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-21 Fengjiao Li , Jia Liu , Bo Ji

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

In this study, a contextual multi-armed bandit (CMAB)-based decentralized channel exploration framework disentangling a channel utility function (i.e., reward) with respect to contending neighboring access points (APs) is proposed. The…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2021-12-02 Kota Yamashita , Shotaro Kamiya , Koji Yamamoto , Yusuke Koda , Takayuki Nishio , Masahiro Morikura

The combinatorial multi-armed bandit model is designed to maximize cumulative rewards in the presence of uncertainty by activating a subset of arms in each round. This paper is inspired by two critical applications in wireless networks,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Xiaoyi Wu , Bin Li

We study the preference-based pure exploration problem for bandits with vector-valued rewards. The rewards are ordered using a (given) preference cone $\mathcal{C}$ and our goal is to identify the set of Pareto optimal arms. First, to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-20 Apurv Shukla , Debabrota Basu

We consider a constrained, pure exploration, stochastic multi-armed bandit formulation under a fixed budget. Each arm is associated with an unknown, possibly multi-dimensional distribution and is described by multiple attributes that are a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-29 Fathima Zarin Faizal , Jayakrishnan Nair

We study best-arm identification (BAI) in the fixed-budget setting. Adaptive allocations based on upper confidence bounds (UCBs), such as UCBE, are known to work well in BAI. However, it is well-known that its optimal regret is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-24 Rong J. B. Zhu , Yanqi Qiu

The problem of opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks has been recently formulated as a non-Bayesian restless multi-armed bandit problem. In this problem, there are N arms (corresponding to channels) and one player…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-11-10 Wenhan Dai , Yi Gai , Bhaskar Krishnamachari

We study the pure exploration problem subject to a matroid constraint (Best-Basis) in a stochastic multi-armed bandit game. In a Best-Basis instance, we are given $n$ stochastic arms with unknown reward distributions, as well as a matroid…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-05-26 Lijie Chen , Anupam Gupta , Jian Li