Related papers: Multiplier Bootstrap-based Exploration
The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a classical learning task that exemplifies the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. However, standard formulations do not take into account {\em risk}. In online decision making systems, risk is a…
The Reward-Biased Maximum Likelihood Estimate (RBMLE) for adaptive control of Markov chains was proposed to overcome the central obstacle of what is variously called the fundamental "closed-identifiability problem" of adaptive control, the…
The problem of opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks has been recently formulated as a non-Bayesian restless multi-armed bandit problem. In this problem, there are N arms (corresponding to channels) and one player…
In this paper, we study the multi-armed bandit problem in the batched setting where the employed policy must split data into a small number of batches. While the minimax regret for the two-armed stochastic bandits has been completely…
We propose a novel Bayesian framework for efficient exploration in contextual multi-task multi-armed bandit settings, where the context is only observed partially and dependencies between reward distributions are induced by latent context…
We give an $(\varepsilon,\delta)$-differentially private algorithm for the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in the shuffle model with a distribution-dependent regret of $O\left(\left(\sum_{a\in [k]:\Delta_a>0}\frac{\log…
We present a modular approach to reinforcement learning that uses a Bayesian representation of the uncertainty over models. The approach, BOSS (Best of Sampled Set), drives exploration by sampling multiple models from the posterior and…
Multi-task learning in contextual bandits has attracted significant research interest due to its potential to enhance decision-making across multiple related tasks by leveraging shared structures and task-specific heterogeneity. In this…
The restless bandit problem is one of the most well-studied generalizations of the celebrated stochastic multi-armed bandit problem in decision theory. In its ultimate generality, the restless bandit problem is known to be PSPACE-Hard to…
We consider the problem of sequentially choosing between a set of unbiased Monte Carlo estimators to minimize the mean-squared-error (MSE) of a final combined estimate. By reducing this task to a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, we…
LLM-guided evolutionary search (Evolve systems) has reached state-of-the-art results on mathematical and combinatorial tasks, yet most existing systems report only the best of many runs and leave the run-to-run distribution undocumented. We…
The multi-armed bandit problem is a core framework for sequential decision-making under uncertainty, but classical algorithms often fail in environments with hidden, time-varying states that confound reward estimation and optimal action…
We propose a bandit algorithm that explores by randomizing its history of rewards. Specifically, it pulls the arm with the highest mean reward in a non-parametric bootstrap sample of its history with pseudo rewards. We design the pseudo…
We consider a multi-armed bandit problem in a setting where each arm produces a noisy reward realization which depends on an observable random covariate. As opposed to the traditional static multi-armed bandit problem, this setting allows…
Reinforcement learning studies how to balance exploration and exploitation in real-world systems, optimizing interactions with the world while simultaneously learning how the world operates. One general class of algorithms for such learning…
Motivated by distributed selection problems, we formulate a new variant of multi-player multi-armed bandit (MAB) model, which captures stochastic arrival of requests to each arm, as well as the policy of allocating requests to players. The…
This paper is about index policies for minimizing (frequentist) regret in a stochastic multi-armed bandit model, inspired by a Bayesian view on the problem. Our main contribution is to prove that the Bayes-UCB algorithm, which relies on…
The design of personalized incentives or recommendations to improve user engagement is gaining prominence as digital platform providers continually emerge. We propose a multi-armed bandit framework for matching incentives to users, whose…
We present simple and efficient algorithms for the batched stochastic multi-armed bandit and batched stochastic linear bandit problems. We prove bounds for their expected regrets that improve over the best-known regret bounds for any number…
For traffic routing platforms, the choice of which route to recommend to a user depends on the congestion on these routes -- indeed, an individual's utility depends on the number of people using the recommended route at that instance.…