Related papers: Top Two Algorithms Revisited

We address the M-best-arm identification problem in multi-armed bandits. A player has a limited budget to explore K arms (M<K), and once pulled, each arm yields a reward drawn (independently) from a fixed, unknown distribution. The goal is…

In a fixed-confidence pure exploration problem in stochastic multi-armed bandits, an algorithm iteratively samples arms and should stop as early as possible and return the correct answer to a query about the arms distributions. We are…

We study fairness within the stochastic, \emph{multi-armed bandit} (MAB) decision making framework. We adapt the fairness framework of "treating similar individuals similarly" to this setting. Here, an `individual' corresponds to an arm and…

Online platforms in the Internet Economy commonly incorporate recommender systems that recommend products (or "arms") to users (or "agents"). A key challenge in this domain arises from myopic agents who are naturally incentivized to exploit…

We study the regret of Thompson sampling (TS) algorithms for exponential family bandits, where the reward distribution is from a one-dimensional exponential family, which covers many common reward distributions including Bernoulli,…

We study the robust best-arm identification problem (RBAI) in the case of linear rewards. The primary objective is to identify a near-optimal robust arm, which involves selecting arms at every round and assessing their robustness by…

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 $S$,…

This paper studies how insurers can chose which claims to investigate for fraud. Given a prediction model, typically only claims with the highest predicted propability of being fraudulent are investigated. We argue that this can lead to…

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…

We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with the graph-based feedback structure introduced by Mannor and Shamir. We analyze the performance of the two most prominent stochastic bandit algorithms, Thompson Sampling and Upper…

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…

We study the combinatorial pure exploration problem Best-Set in stochastic multi-armed bandits. In a Best-Set instance, we are given $n$ arms with unknown reward distributions, as well as a family $\mathcal{F}$ of feasible subsets over the…

We consider a best arm identification (BAI) problem for stochastic bandits with adversarial corruptions in the fixed-budget setting of T steps. We design a novel randomized algorithm, Probabilistic Sequential Shrinking($u$) (PSS($u$)),…

Thompson sampling is a popular algorithm for solving multi-armed bandit problems, and has been applied in a wide range of applications, from website design to portfolio optimization. In such applications, however, the number of choices (or…

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…

We discuss a multiple-play multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in which several arms are selected at each round. Recently, Thompson sampling (TS), a randomized algorithm with a Bayesian spirit, has attracted much attention for its empirically…

Thompson sampling, a Bayesian method for balancing exploration and exploitation in bandit problems, has theoretical guarantees and exhibits strong empirical performance in many domains. Traditional Thompson sampling, however, assumes…

We study best arm identification in a restless multi-armed bandit setting with finitely many arms. The discrete-time data generated by each arm forms a homogeneous Markov chain taking values in a common, finite state space. The state…

Motivated by real-world applications that necessitate responsible experimentation, we introduce the problem of best arm identification (BAI) with minimal regret. This innovative variant of the multi-armed bandit problem elegantly…

The question of selecting the "best" amongst different choices is a common problem in statistics. In drug development, our motivating setting, the question becomes, for example: what is the dose that gives me a pre-specified risk of…