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We study a novel variant of the multi-armed bandit problem, where at each time step, the player observes an independently sampled context that determines the arms' mean rewards. However, playing an arm blocks it (across all contexts) for a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-18 Soumya Basu , Orestis Papadigenopoulos , Constantine Caramanis , Sanjay Shakkottai

We provide a simple method to combine stochastic bandit algorithms. Our approach is based on a "meta-UCB" procedure that treats each of $N$ individual bandit algorithms as arms in a higher-level $N$-armed bandit problem that we solve with a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Ashok Cutkosky , Abhimanyu Das , Manish Purohit

Multi-armed bandit algorithms have become a reference solution for handling the explore/exploit dilemma in recommender systems, and many other important real-world problems, such as display advertisement. However, such algorithms usually…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-25 Qingyun Wu , Naveen Iyer , Hongning Wang

This paper presents a finite-time analysis of the KL-UCB algorithm, an online, horizon-free index policy for stochastic bandit problems. We prove two distinct results: first, for arbitrary bounded rewards, the KL-UCB algorithm satisfies a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2013-08-30 Aurélien Garivier , Olivier Cappé

I introduce and analyse an anytime version of the Optimally Confident UCB (OCUCB) algorithm designed for minimising the cumulative regret in finite-armed stochastic bandits with subgaussian noise. The new algorithm is simple, intuitive (in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-05-09 Tor Lattimore

Contextual bandit learning is a reinforcement learning problem where the learner repeatedly receives a set of features (context), takes an action and receives a reward based on the action and context. We consider this problem under a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-03-05 Alekh Agarwal , Miroslav Dudík , Satyen Kale , John Langford , Robert E. Schapire

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a foundational framework in sequential decision-making under uncertainty, extensively studied for its applications in areas such as clinical trials, online advertising, and resource allocation.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-28 Ali Baheri

Dueling bandits is a prominent framework for decision-making involving preferential feedback, a valuable feature that fits various applications involving human interaction, such as ranking, information retrieval, and recommendation systems.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-16 Qiwei Di , Tao Jin , Yue Wu , Heyang Zhao , Farzad Farnoud , Quanquan Gu

Contextual linear bandits is a rich and theoretically important model that has many practical applications. Recently, this setup gained a lot of interest in applications over wireless where communication constraints can be a performance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-10 Osama A. Hanna , Lin F. Yang , Christina Fragouli

A stochastic combinatorial semi-bandit is an online learning problem where at each step a learning agent chooses a subset of ground items subject to constraints, and then observes stochastic weights of these items and receives their sum as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-06-08 Branislav Kveton , Zheng Wen , Azin Ashkan , Csaba Szepesvari

The linear contextual bandit literature is mostly focused on the design of efficient learning algorithms for a given representation. However, a contextual bandit problem may admit multiple linear representations, each one with different…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-09 Matteo Papini , Andrea Tirinzoni , Marcello Restelli , Alessandro Lazaric , Matteo Pirotta

The safe linear bandit problem is a version of the classical stochastic linear bandit problem where the learner's actions must satisfy an uncertain constraint at all rounds. Due its applicability to many real-world settings, this problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-13 Spencer Hutchinson , Berkay Turan , Mahnoosh Alizadeh

We study bandit model selection in stochastic environments. Our approach relies on a meta-algorithm that selects between candidate base algorithms. We develop a meta-algorithm-base algorithm abstraction that can work with general classes of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Aldo Pacchiano , My Phan , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Anup Rao , Julian Zimmert , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvari

A standard assumption in contextual multi-arm bandit is that the true context is perfectly known before arm selection. Nonetheless, in many practical applications (e.g., cloud resource management), prior to arm selection, the context…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-06 Jianyi Yang , Shaolei Ren

The multi-armed bandit formalism has been extensively studied under various attack models, in which an adversary can modify the reward revealed to the player. Previous studies focused on scenarios where the attack value either is bounded at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-19 Ziwei Guan , Kaiyi Ji , Donald J Bucci , Timothy Y Hu , Joseph Palombo , Michael Liston , Yingbin Liang

We study contextual bandits in the presence of a stage-wise constraint when the constraint must be satisfied both with high probability and in expectation. We start with the linear case where both the reward function and the stage-wise…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-22 Aldo Pacchiano , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Peter Bartlett

We study the contextual multi-armed bandit problem with a finite context space (a.k.a. subpopulations), where the learner recommends a best action for each context and is evaluated by context-weighted simple regret. Our guarantees are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Mohammad Shahverdikondori , Jalal Etesami , Negar Kiyavash

We consider a sequential assortment selection problem where the user choice is given by a multinomial logit (MNL) choice model whose parameters are unknown. In each period, the learning agent observes a $d$-dimensional contextual…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-03-26 Min-hwan Oh , Garud Iyengar

The contextual bandit problem, where agents arrive sequentially with personal contexts and the system adapts its arm allocation decisions accordingly, has recently garnered increasing attention for enabling more personalized outcomes.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Yiting Hu , Lingjie Duan

Model selection in supervised learning provides costless guarantees as if the model that best balances bias and variance was known a priori. We study the feasibility of similar guarantees for cumulative regret minimization in the stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-25 Sanath Kumar Krishnamurthy , Adrienne Margaret Propp , Susan Athey