Related papers: Continuous-in-time Limit for Bayesian Bandits
In this paper, we introduce a multi-armed bandit problem termed max-min grouped bandits, in which the arms are arranged in possibly-overlapping groups, and the goal is to find the group whose worst arm has the highest mean reward. This…
We study how to make decisions that minimize Bayesian regret in offline linear bandits. Prior work suggests that one must take actions with maximum lower confidence bound (LCB) on their reward. We argue that the reliance on LCB is…
We introduce a new numerical method to approximate the solution of a finite horizon deterministic optimal control problem. We exploit two Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman PDE, arising by considering the dynamics in forward and backward time. This…
We consider the quantum version of the bandit problem known as {\em best arm identification} (BAI). We first propose a quantum modeling of the BAI problem, which assumes that both the learning agent and the environment are quantum; we then…
This paper considers the efficient exact computation of the counterpart of the Gittins index for a finite-horizon discrete-state bandit, which measures for each initial state the average productivity, given by the maximum ratio of expected…
In this paper we consider the numerical approximation of infinite horizon problems via the dynamic programming approach. The value function of the problem solves a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation that is approximated by a fully…
Optimally solving a multi-armed bandit problem suffers the curse of dimensionality. Indeed, resorting to dynamic programming leads to an exponential growth of computing time, as the number of arms and the horizon increase. We introduce a…
We study a novel pure exploration problem: the $\epsilon$-Thresholding Bandit Problem (TBP) with fixed confidence in stochastic linear bandits. We prove a lower bound for the sample complexity and extend an algorithm designed for Best Arm…
For the stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem from a constrained model that generalizes the classical one, we show that an asymptotic optimality is achievable by a simple strategy extended from the $\epsilon_t$-greedy strategy. We…
We consider best arm identification in the multi-armed bandit problem. Assuming certain continuity conditions of the prior, we characterize the rate of the Bayesian simple regret. Differing from Bayesian regret minimization (Lai, 1987), the…
Policy iteration (PI) is a widely used algorithm for synthesizing optimal feedback control policies across many engineering and scientific applications. When PI is deployed on infinite-horizon, nonlinear, autonomous optimal-control…
In this paper we consider the adversarial contextual bandit problem in metric spaces. The paper "Nearest neighbour with bandit feedback" tackled this problem but when there are many contexts near the decision boundary of the comparator…
In this paper, we consider a best action identification problem in the stochastic linear bandit setup with a fixed confident constraint. In the considered best action identification problem, instead of minimizing the accumulative regret as…
We consider restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) with a finite horizon and multiple pulls per period. Leveraging the Lagrangian relaxation, we approximate the problem with a collection of single arm problems. We then propose an index-based…
This paper presents a mathematical formulation to perform temporal parallelisation of continuous-time optimal control problems, which can be solved via the Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman (HJB) equation. We divide the time interval of the control…
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.…
We address the problem of finding the maximizer of a nonlinear smooth function, that can only be evaluated point-wise, subject to constraints on the number of permitted function evaluations. This problem is also known as fixed-budget best…
We adopt an optimal-control framework for addressing the undiscounted infinite-horizon discrete-time restless $N$-armed bandit problem. Unlike most studies that rely on constructing policies based on the relaxed single-armed Markov Decision…
PAC-Bayes has recently re-emerged as an effective theory with which one can derive principled learning algorithms with tight performance guarantees. However, applications of PAC-Bayes to bandit problems are relatively rare, which is a great…
We consider the inverse problem of multi-armed bandits (IMAB) that are widely used in neuroscience and psychology research for behavior modelling. We first show that the IMAB problem is not convex in general, but can be relaxed to a convex…