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We consider a novel multi-arm bandit (MAB) setup, where a learner needs to communicate the actions to distributed agents over erasure channels, while the rewards for the actions are directly available to the learner through external…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-27 Osama Hanna , Merve Karakas , Lin F. Yang , Christina Fragouli

We study a strategic version of the multi-armed bandit problem, where each arm is an individual strategic agent and we, the principal, pull one arm each round. When pulled, the arm receives some private reward $v_a$ and can choose an amount…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-07-03 Mark Braverman , Jieming Mao , Jon Schneider , S. Matthew Weinberg

The problem of multi-armed bandits (MAB) asks to make sequential decisions while balancing between exploitation and exploration, and have been successfully applied to a wide range of practical scenarios. Various algorithms have been…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-24 Xiaojin Zhang , Shuai Li , Weiwen Liu , Shengyu Zhang

In many real-world applications, multiple agents seek to learn how to perform highly related yet slightly different tasks in an online bandit learning protocol. We formulate this problem as the $\epsilon$-multi-player multi-armed bandit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-21 Zhi Wang , Chicheng Zhang , Manish Kumar Singh , Laurel D. Riek , Kamalika Chaudhuri

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems are widely studied in fields of operations research, stochastic optimization, and reinforcement learning. In this paper, we consider the classical MAB model with heavy-tailed reward distributions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-16 Keqin Liu , Tianshuo Zheng , Zhi-Hua Zhou

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) processes constitute a foundational subclass of reinforcement learning problems and represent a central topic in statistical decision theory, but are limited to simultaneous adaptive allocation and sequential test,…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-27 Li Yang , Xiaodong Yan , Dandan Jiang

We explore a novel setting of the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem inspired from real world applications which we call bandits with "stochastic delayed composite anonymous feedback (SDCAF)". In SDCAF, the rewards on pulling arms are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-14 Siddhant Garg , Aditya Kumar Akash

Restless multi-armed bandits (RMAB) play a central role in modeling sequential decision making problems under an instantaneous activation constraint that at most B arms can be activated at any decision epoch. Each restless arm is endowed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-03 Guojun Xiong , Jian Li

Adversarial attacks against stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms have been extensively studied in the literature. In this work, we focus on reward poisoning attacks and find most existing attacks can be easily detected by our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Zhiwei Wang , Huazheng Wang , Hongning Wang

We study distributed cooperative decision-making under the explore-exploit tradeoff in the multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem. We extend the state-of-the-art frequentist and Bayesian algorithms for single-agent MAB problems to cooperative…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-09-18 Peter Landgren , Vaibhav Srivastava , Naomi Ehrich Leonard

When multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms allocate pulls among competing arms, the resulting allocation can exhibit huge variation. This is particularly harmful in modern applications such as learning-enhanced platform operations and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Yilun Chen , Jiaqi Lu

Conducting randomized experiments in education settings raises the question of how we can use machine learning techniques to improve educational interventions. Using Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) algorithms like Thompson Sampling (TS) in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-11 Fernando J. Yanez , Angela Zavaleta-Bernuy , Ziwen Han , Michael Liut , Anna Rafferty , Joseph Jay Williams

The multi-armed bandit is a concise model for the problem of iterated decision-making under uncertainty. In each round, a gambler must pull one of $K$ arms of a slot machine, without any foreknowledge of their payouts, except that they are…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Varsha Dani , Thomas P. Hayes

In a multi-armed bandit problem, an online algorithm chooses from a set of strategies in a sequence of trials so as to maximize the total payoff of the chosen strategies. While the performance of bandit algorithms with a small finite…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2008-09-30 Robert Kleinberg , Aleksandrs Slivkins , Eli Upfal

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a ubiquitous decision-making problem that exemplifies the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. Standard formulations exclude risk in decision making. Risk notably complicates the basic reward-maximising…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-05 Joel Q. L. Chang , Qiuyu Zhu , Vincent Y. F. Tan

This paper considers a stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem with dual objectives: (i) quick identification and commitment to the optimal arm, and (ii) reward maximization throughout a sequence of $T$ consecutive rounds. Though each…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-31 Qining Zhang , Lei Ying

In this paper, we introduce Ballooning Multi-Armed Bandits (BL-MAB), a novel extension of the classical stochastic MAB model. In the BL-MAB model, the set of available arms grows (or balloons) over time. In contrast to the classical MAB…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-23 Ganesh Ghalme , Swapnil Dhamal , Shweta Jain , Sujit Gujar , Y. Narahari

We study a multi-armed bandit problem where the rewards exhibit regime switching. Specifically, the distributions of the random rewards generated from all arms are modulated by a common underlying state modeled as a finite-state Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-02 Xiang Zhou , Yi Xiong , Ningyuan Chen , Xuefeng Gao

The sample mean is among the most well studied estimators in statistics, having many desirable properties such as unbiasedness and consistency. However, when analyzing data collected using a multi-armed bandit (MAB) experiment, the sample…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-05-03 Jaehyeok Shin , Aaditya Ramdas , Alessandro Rinaldo

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-13 Vincent Y. F. Tan , Prashanth L. A. , Krishna Jagannathan