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We give a complete characterization of the complexity of best-arm identification in one-parameter bandit problems. We prove a new, tight lower bound on the sample complexity. We propose the `Track-and-Stop' strategy, which we prove to be…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2016-06-02 Aurélien Garivier , Emilie Kaufmann

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the problem of Best Arm Retention (BAR), which has recently found applications in streaming algorithms for multi-armed bandits. In the BAR problem, the goal is to retain $m$ arms with the best…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-17 Houshuang Chen , Yuchen He , Chihao Zhang

We study a regret minimization problem with the existence of multiple best/near-optimal arms in the multi-armed bandit setting. We consider the case when the number of arms/actions is comparable or much larger than the time horizon, and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-23 Yinglun Zhu , Robert Nowak

Practitioners conducting adaptive experiments often encounter two competing priorities: maximizing total welfare (or `reward') through effective treatment assignment and swiftly concluding experiments to implement population-wide…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-31 Chao Qin , Daniel Russo

We consider a stochastic multi-armed bandit setting where reward must be actively queried for it to be observed. We provide tight lower and upper problem-dependent guarantees on both the regret and the number of queries. Interestingly, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-28 Nadav Merlis , Yonathan Efroni , Shie Mannor

Identifying the best arm of a multi-armed bandit is a central problem in bandit optimization. We study a quantum computational version of this problem with coherent oracle access to states encoding the reward probabilities of each arm as…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-02-02 Daochen Wang , Xuchen You , Tongyang Li , Andrew M. Childs

We consider the classic problem of $(\epsilon,\delta)$-PAC learning a best arm where the goal is to identify with confidence $1-\delta$ an arm whose mean is an $\epsilon$-approximation to that of the highest mean arm in a multi-armed bandit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Avinatan Hassidim , Ron Kupfer , Yaron Singer

Thompson sampling is one of the earliest randomized algorithms for multi-armed bandits (MAB). In this paper, we extend the Thompson sampling to Budgeted MAB, where there is random cost for pulling an arm and the total cost is constrained by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-05-04 Yingce Xia , Haifang Li , Tao Qin , Nenghai Yu , Tie-Yan Liu

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-07-11 Shahin Shahrampour , Vahid Tarokh

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a classic example of the exploration-exploitation dilemma. It is concerned with maximising the total rewards for a gambler by sequentially pulling an arm from a multi-armed slot machine where each arm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-05-16 Xue Lu , Niall Adams , Nikolas Kantas

We consider the problem of finding, through adaptive sampling, which of $n$ options (arms) has the largest mean. Our objective is to determine a rule which identifies the best arm with a fixed minimum confidence using as few observations as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-17 MohammadJavad Azizi , Sheldon M Ross , Zhengyu Zhang

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

Traditional multi-armed bandit (MAB) formulations usually make certain assumptions about the underlying arms' distributions, such as bounds on the support or their tail behaviour. Moreover, such parametric information is usually 'baked'…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-29 Anmol Kagrecha , Jayakrishnan Nair , Krishna Jagannathan

We study the problem of identifying the best arm in a multi-armed bandit environment when each arm is a time-homogeneous and ergodic discrete-time Markov process on a common, finite state space. The state evolution on each arm is governed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-30 P. N. Karthik , Kota Srinivas Reddy , Vincent Y. F. Tan

In good arm identification (GAI), the goal is to identify one arm whose average performance exceeds a given threshold, referred to as a good arm, if it exists. Few works have studied GAI in the fixed-budget setting when the sampling budget…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-08 Marc Jourdan , Andrée Delahaye-Duriez , Clémence Réda

We propose EB-TC$\varepsilon$, a novel sampling rule for $\varepsilon$-best arm identification in stochastic bandits. It is the first instance of Top Two algorithm analyzed for approximate best arm identification. EB-TC$\varepsilon$ is an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-11-07 Marc Jourdan , Rémy Degenne , Emilie Kaufmann

We consider the problem of \textit{best arm identification} with a \textit{fixed budget $T$}, in the $K$-armed stochastic bandit setting, with arms distribution defined on $[0,1]$. We prove that any bandit strategy, for at least one bandit…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-05-31 Alexandra Carpentier , Andrea Locatelli

We study a general multi-dueling bandit problem, where an agent compares multiple options simultaneously and aims to minimize the regret due to selecting suboptimal arms. This setting generalizes the traditional two-dueling bandit problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-21 Yihan Du , Siwei Wang , Longbo Huang

Multi-armed bandit algorithms have been argued for decades as useful for adaptively randomized experiments. In such experiments, an algorithm varies which arms (e.g. alternative interventions to help students learn) are assigned to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-29 Joseph Jay Williams , Jacob Nogas , Nina Deliu , Hammad Shaikh , Sofia S. Villar , Audrey Durand , Anna Rafferty

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-09 Wei Wang , Sattar Vakili , Ilija Bogunovic