Related papers: Maximizing and Satisficing in Multi-armed Bandits …
Motivated by applications such as online labor markets we consider a variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where we have a collection of arms representing strategic agents with different performance characteristics. The…
Stable matching, a classical model for two-sided markets, has long been studied with little consideration for how each side's preferences are learned. With the advent of massive online markets powered by data-driven matching platforms, it…
We generalize the multiple-play multi-armed bandits (MP-MAB) problem with a shareable arm setting, in which several plays can share the same arm. Furthermore, each shareable arm has a finite reward capacity and a ''per-load'' reward…
We consider a bandit problem over a graph where the rewards are not directly observed. Instead, the decision maker can compare two nodes and receive (stochastic) information pertaining to the difference in their value. The graph structure…
Causal knowledge can be used to support decision-making problems. This has been recognized in the causal bandits literature, where a causal (multi-armed) bandit is characterized by a causal graphical model and a target variable. The arms…
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…
Traditional multi-armed bandit (MAB) formulations usually make certain assumptions about the underlying arms' distributions, such as bounds on the support or their tail behaviour. Moreover, such parametric information is usually 'baked'…
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…
Pure exploration (aka active testing) is the fundamental task of sequentially gathering information to answer a query about a stochastic environment. Good algorithms make few mistakes and take few samples. Lower bounds (for multi-armed…
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…
In the classical multi-armed bandit problem, d arms are available to the decision maker who pulls them sequentially in order to maximize his cumulative reward. Guarantees can be obtained on a relative quantity called regret, which scales…
We study the problem of learning 'good' interventions in a stochastic environment modeled by its underlying causal graph. Good interventions refer to interventions that maximize rewards. Specifically, we consider the setting of a…
Mode estimation is a classical problem in statistics with a wide range of applications in machine learning. Despite this, there is little understanding in its robustness properties under possibly adversarial data contamination. In this…
Multi-armed bandits (MAB) model sequential decision making problems, in which a learner sequentially chooses arms with unknown reward distributions in order to maximize its cumulative reward. Most of the prior work on MAB assumes that the…
We consider a combinatorial generalization of the classical multi-armed bandit problem that is defined as follows. There is a given bipartite graph of $M$ users and $N \geq M$ resources. For each user-resource pair $(i,j)$, there is an…
The best arm identification problem (BEST-1-ARM) is the most basic pure exploration problem in stochastic multi-armed bandits. The problem has a long history and attracted significant attention for the last decade. However, we do not yet…
We consider a scenario where an agent has multiple available strategies to explore an unknown environment. For each new interaction with the environment, the agent must select which exploration strategy to use. We provide a new…
We consider a variant of the multi-armed bandit model, which we call multi-armed bandit problem with known trend, where the gambler knows the shape of the reward function of each arm but not its distribution. This new problem is motivated…
We study finite-armed stochastic bandits where the rewards of each arm might be correlated to those of other arms. We introduce a novel phased algorithm that exploits the given structure to build confidence sets over the parameters of the…
In a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, an online algorithm makes a sequence of choices. In each round it chooses from a time-invariant set of alternatives and receives the payoff associated with this alternative. While the case of small…