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We consider the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem, where an agent sequentially chooses actions and observes rewards for the actions it took. While the majority of algorithms try to minimize the regret, i.e., the cumulative difference between…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-14 Nadav Merlis , Shie Mannor

Sharpe Ratio (SR) is a critical parameter in characterizing financial time series as it jointly considers the reward and the volatility of any stock/portfolio through its variance. Deriving online algorithms for optimizing the SR is…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2024-06-12 Sabrina Khurshid , Mohammed Shahid Abdulla , Gourab Ghatak

Stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) mechanisms are widely used in sponsored search auctions, crowdsourcing, online procurement, etc. Existing stochastic MAB mechanisms with a deterministic payment rule, proposed in the literature,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-06-01 Divya Padmanabhan , Satyanath Bhat , Prabuchandran K. J. , Shirish Shevade , Y. Narahari

We consider a multi-armed bandit setting with finitely many arms, in which each arm yields an $M$-dimensional vector reward upon selection. We assume that the reward of each dimension (a.k.a. {\em objective}) is generated independently of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-24 Zhirui Chen , P. N. Karthik , Yeow Meng Chee , Vincent Y. F. Tan

I introduce and analyse an anytime version of the Optimally Confident UCB (OCUCB) algorithm designed for minimising the cumulative regret in finite-armed stochastic bandits with subgaussian noise. The new algorithm is simple, intuitive (in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-05-09 Tor Lattimore

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

This paper introduces and addresses a wide class of stochastic bandit problems where the function mapping the arm to the corresponding reward exhibits some known structural properties. Most existing structures (e.g. linear, Lipschitz,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-02 Richard Combes , Stefan Magureanu , Alexandre Proutiere

We discuss a multiple-play multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in which several arms are selected at each round. Recently, Thompson sampling (TS), a randomized algorithm with a Bayesian spirit, has attracted much attention for its empirically…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-03-22 Junpei Komiyama , Junya Honda , Hiroshi Nakagawa

We study the Stochastic Multi-armed Bandit problem under bounded arm-memory. In this setting, the arms arrive in a stream, and the number of arms that can be stored in the memory at any time, is bounded. The decision-maker can only pull…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-10 Arnab Maiti , Vishakha Patil , Arindam Khan

We study the non-stationary stochastic multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem and propose two generic algorithms, namely, the limited memory deterministic sequencing of exploration and exploitation (LM-DSEE) and the Sliding-Window Upper Confidence…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-04-25 Lai Wei , Vaibhav Srivastava

This paper investigates a hitherto unaddressed aspect of best arm identification (BAI) in stochastic multi-armed bandits in the fixed-confidence setting. Two key metrics for assessing bandit algorithms are computational efficiency and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-06-26 Arpan Mukherjee , Ali Tajer

Much of the literature on optimal design of bandit algorithms is based on minimization of expected regret. It is well known that designs that are optimal over certain exponential families can achieve expected regret that grows…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-14 Lin Fan , Peter W. Glynn

We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem in the case when the arm samples are dependent over time and generated from so-called weak $\cC$-mixing processes. We establish a $\cC-$Mix Improved UCB agorithm and provide both…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-26 Oleksandr Zadorozhnyi , Gilles Blanchard , Alexandra Carpentier

We consider a multi-armed bandit problem in which a set of arms is registered by each agent, and the agent receives reward when its arm is selected. An agent might strategically submit more arms with replications, which can bring more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Suho Shin , Seungjoon Lee , Jungseul Ok

We study the fixed-budget best-arm identification (BAI) problem in non-stationary linear bandits. Concretely, given a fixed time budget $T\in \mathbb{N}$, finite arm set $\mathcal{X} \subset \mathbb{R}^d$, and a potentially adversarial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-12 Leo Maynard-Zhang , Zhihan Xiong , Kevin Jamieson , Maryam Fazel

We consider the query recommendation problem in closed loop interactive learning settings like online information gathering and exploratory analytics. The problem can be naturally modelled using the Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) framework with…

Recent studies have shown that reinforcement learning with KL-regularized objectives can enjoy faster rates of convergence or logarithmic regret, in contrast to the classical $\sqrt{T}$-type regret in the unregularized setting. However, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Kaixuan Ji , Qingyue Zhao , Heyang Zhao , Qiwei Di , Quanquan Gu

We consider a variant of the best arm identification (BAI) problem in multi-armed bandits (MAB) in which there are two sets of arms (source and target), and the objective is to determine the best target arm while only pulling source arms.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-09 Ojash Neopane , Aaditya Ramdas , Aarti Singh

We study \emph{multi-armed bandits} (MABs) augmented with \emph{best-action queries}, in which the learner may additionally query an oracle that reveals the best arm in the current round. This setting was recently characterized by Russo et…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Francesco Bacchiocchi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Francesco Emanuele Stradi

We consider a novel stochastic multi-armed bandit problem called {\em good arm identification} (GAI), where a good arm is defined as an arm with expected reward greater than or equal to a given threshold. GAI is a pure-exploration problem…