English
Related papers

Related papers: Non-Asymptotic Analysis of a UCB-based Top Two Alg…

200 papers

We consider the combinatorial bandits problem, where at each time step, the online learner selects a size-$k$ subset $s$ from the arms set $\mathcal{A}$, where $\left|\mathcal{A}\right| = n$, and observes a stochastic reward of each arm in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-05 Shuo Yang , Tongzheng Ren , Inderjit S. Dhillon , Sujay Sanghavi

The challenge of identifying the best feasible arm within a fixed budget has attracted considerable interest in recent years. However, a notable gap remains in the literature: the exact exponential rate at which the error probability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-04 Jie Bian , Vincent Y. F. Tan

Adaptively collected data has become ubiquitous within modern practice. However, even seemingly benign adaptive sampling schemes can introduce severe biases, rendering traditional statistical inference tools inapplicable. This can be…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-12-02 Wei Fan , Kevin Tan , Yuting Wei

We consider the question introduced by \cite{Mason2020} of identifying all the $\varepsilon$-optimal arms in a finite stochastic multi-armed bandit with Gaussian rewards. We give two lower bounds on the sample complexity of any algorithm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-07 Aymen Al Marjani , Tomáš Kocák , Aurélien Garivier

We present a provably optimal differentially private algorithm for the stochastic multi-arm bandit problem, as opposed to the private analogue of the UCB-algorithm [Mishra and Thakurta, 2015; Tossou and Dimitrakakis, 2016] which doesn't…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-05-24 Touqir Sajed , Or Sheffet

This paper studies regret minimization in a multi-armed bandit. It is well known that side information, such as the prior distribution of arm means in Thompson sampling, can improve the statistical efficiency of the bandit algorithm. While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Rong Zhu , Branislav Kveton

Motivated by economic applications such as recommender systems, we study the behavior of stochastic bandits algorithms under \emph{strategic behavior} conducted by rational actors, i.e., the arms. Each arm is a \emph{self-interested}…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-16 Zhe Feng , David C. Parkes , Haifeng Xu

We propose $\tt RandUCB$, a bandit strategy that builds on theoretically derived confidence intervals similar to upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithms, but akin to Thompson sampling (TS), it uses randomization to trade off exploration and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-24 Sharan Vaswani , Abbas Mehrabian , Audrey Durand , Branislav Kveton

Top-$2$ methods have become popular in solving the best arm identification (BAI) problem. The best arm, or the arm with the largest mean amongst finitely many, is identified through an algorithm that at any sequential step independently…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-17 Agniv Bandyopadhyay , Sandeep Juneja , Shubhada Agrawal

In this paper, we study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with graph feedback. Motivated by applications in clinical trials and recommendation systems, we assume that two arms are connected if and only if they are similar (i.e.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Han Qi , Fei Guo , Li Zhu , Qiaosheng Zhang

We study the corrupted bandit problem, i.e. a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with $k$ unknown reward distributions, which are heavy-tailed and corrupted by a history-independent adversary or Nature. To be specific, the reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-22 Debabrota Basu , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Timothée Mathieu

We study the problem of best-arm identification with fixed budget in stochastic multi-armed bandits with Bernoulli rewards. For the problem with two arms, also known as the A/B testing problem, we prove that there is no algorithm that (i)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-05 Po-An Wang , Kaito Ariu , Alexandre Proutiere

Motivated by models of human decision making proposed to explain commonly observed deviations from conventional expected value preferences, we formulate two stochastic multi-armed bandit problems with distorted probabilities on the reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Ravi Kumar Kolla , Prashanth L. A. , Aditya Gopalan , Krishna Jagannathan , Michael Fu , Steve Marcus

Multi-armed bandit problems are considered as a paradigm of the trade-off between exploring the environment to find profitable actions and exploiting what is already known. In the stationary case, the distributions of the rewards do not…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2008-12-18 Aurélien Garivier , Eric Moulines

In fixed budget bandit identification, an algorithm sequentially observes samples from several distributions up to a given final time. It then answers a query about the set of distributions. A good algorithm will have a small probability of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-07-03 Rémy Degenne

We study a decentralized cooperative multi-agent multi-armed bandit problem with $K$ arms and $N$ agents connected over a network. In our model, each arm's reward distribution is same for all agents, and rewards are drawn independently…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-29 Anusha Lalitha , Andrea Goldsmith

We study best arm identification in a federated multi-armed bandit setting with a central server and multiple clients, when each client has access to a {\em subset} of arms and each arm yields independent Gaussian observations. The goal is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-20 Zhirui Chen , P. N. Karthik , Vincent Y. F. Tan , Yeow Meng Chee

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms have achieved significant success in sequential decision-making applications, under the premise that humans perfectly implement the recommended policy. However, existing methods often overlook the crucial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-07 Changxiao Cai , Jiacheng Zhang

Contextual multi-armed bandits (CMAB) have been widely used for learning to filter and prioritize information according to a user's interest. In this work, we analyze top-K ranking under the CMAB framework where the top-K arms are chosen…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-31 Michael Rawson , Jade Freeman

In multi-objective decision-making with hierarchical preferences, lexicographic bandits provide a natural framework for optimizing multiple objectives in a prioritized order. In this setting, a learner repeatedly selects arms and observes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Bo Xue , Yuanyu Wan , Zhichao Lu , Qingfu Zhang