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In multi-armed bandits, the most-explored arms are the most informative, while reward maximization typically pulls only the best arm. We study the tradeoff between identifying arm means accurately and accumulating reward, and present an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Akram Erraqabi , Alessandro Lazaric , Michal Valko , Emma Brunskill , Yun-En Liu

In a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem a gambler needs to choose at each round of play one of K arms, each characterized by an unknown reward distribution. Reward realizations are only observed when an arm is selected, and the gambler's…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-11 Omar Besbes , Yonatan Gur , Assaf Zeevi

In the Best-$K$ identification problem (Best-$K$-Arm), we are given $N$ stochastic bandit arms with unknown reward distributions. Our goal is to identify the $K$ arms with the largest means with high confidence, by drawing samples from the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-22 Haotian Jiang , Jian Li , Mingda Qiao

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

We study the problem of incentivizing exploration for myopic users in linear bandits, where the users tend to exploit arm with the highest predicted reward instead of exploring. In order to maximize the long-term reward, the system offers…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-09 Huazheng Wang , Haifeng Xu , Chuanhao Li , Zhiyuan Liu , Hongning Wang

Pure exploration in bandits formalises multiple real-world problems, such as tuning hyper-parameters or conducting user studies to test a set of items, where different safety, resource, and fairness constraints on the decision space…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Udvas Das , Debabrota Basu

In multi-armed bandits, the tasks of reward maximization and pure exploration are often at odds with each other. The former focuses on exploiting arms with the highest means, while the latter may require constant exploration across all…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-22 Brian Cho , Dominik Meier , Kyra Gan , Nathan Kallus

Combinatorial bandits with semi-bandit feedback generalize multi-armed bandits, where the agent chooses sets of arms and observes a noisy reward for each arm contained in the chosen set. The action set satisfies a given structure such as…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-01-22 Marc Jourdan , Mojmír Mutný , Johannes Kirschner , Andreas Krause

The improving multi-armed bandits problem is a formal model for allocating effort under uncertainty, motivated by scenarios such as investing research effort into new technologies, performing clinical trials, and hyperparameter selection…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Avrim Blum , Marten Garicano , Kavya Ravichandran , Dravyansh Sharma

We consider the best arm identification problem in the stochastic multi-armed bandit framework where each arm has a tiny probability of realizing large rewards while with overwhelming probability the reward is zero. A key application of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-15 Anirban Bhattacharjee , Sushant Vijayan , Sandeep K Juneja

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

The celebrated multi-armed bandit problem in decision theory models the basic trade-off between exploration, or learning about the state of a system, and exploitation, or utilizing the system. In this paper we study the variant of the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-06-19 Sudipto Guha , Kamesh Munagala

Multi-armed bandit problems are receiving a great deal of attention because they adequately formalize the exploration-exploitation trade-offs arising in several industrially relevant applications, such as online advertisement and, more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-11-05 Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi , Claudio Gentile , Giovanni Zappella

This paper addresses the exploration-exploitation dilemma inherent in decision-making, focusing on multi-armed bandit problems. The problems involve an agent deciding whether to exploit current knowledge for immediate gains or explore new…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-07-06 Alex Barbier-Chebbah , Christian L. Vestergaard , Jean-Baptiste Masson

Multi-player multi-armed bandits (MMAB) study how decentralized players cooperatively play the same multi-armed bandit so as to maximize their total cumulative rewards. Existing MMAB models mostly assume when more than one player pulls the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-29 Xuchuang Wang , Hong Xie , John C. S. Lui

We study the best-arm identification problem in linear bandit, where the rewards of the arms depend linearly on an unknown parameter $\theta^*$ and the objective is to return the arm with the largest reward. We characterize the complexity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-11-05 Marta Soare , Alessandro Lazaric , Rémi Munos

The classical multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem involves a learner and a collection of K independent arms, each with its own ex ante unknown independent reward distribution. At each one of a finite number of rounds, the learner selects one…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-07 Hongda Hu , Arthur Charpentier , Mario Ghossoub , Alexander Schied

Motivated by distributed selection problems, we formulate a new variant of multi-player multi-armed bandit (MAB) model, which captures stochastic arrival of requests to each arm, as well as the policy of allocating requests to players. The…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-08-21 Hong Xie , Jinyu Mo , Defu Lian , Jie Wang , Enhong Chen

Boltzmann exploration is widely used in reinforcement learning to provide a trade-off between exploration and exploitation. Recently, in (Cesa-Bianchi et al., 2017) it has been shown that pure Boltzmann exploration does not perform well…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-23 Harsh Gupta , Seo Taek Kong , R. Srikant , Weina Wang

We study a distributed decision-making problem in which multiple agents face the same multi-armed bandit (MAB), and each agent makes sequential choices among arms to maximize its own individual reward. The agents cooperate by sharing their…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-13 Peter Landgren , Vaibhav Srivastava , Naomi Ehrich Leonard