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We develop a novel and generic algorithm for the adversarial multi-armed bandit problem (or more generally the combinatorial semi-bandit problem). When instantiated differently, our algorithm achieves various new data-dependent regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-08 Chen-Yu Wei , Haipeng Luo

We propose a simple model selection approach for algorithms in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. As opposed to prior work that (implicitly) assumes knowledge of the optimal regret, we only require that each base…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Aldo Pacchiano , Christoph Dann , Claudio Gentile , Peter Bartlett

Information-directed sampling (IDS) is a powerful framework for solving bandit problems which has shown strong results in both Bayesian and frequentist settings. However, frequentist IDS, like many other bandit algorithms, requires that one…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-10 Piotr M. Suder , Eric Laber

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-07 Emilie Kaufmann

Many real-world functions are defined over both categorical and category-specific continuous variables and thus cannot be optimized by traditional Bayesian optimization (BO) methods. To optimize such functions, we propose a new method that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-02 Dang Nguyen , Sunil Gupta , Santu Rana , Alistair Shilton , Svetha Venkatesh

The Colonel Blotto game is a renowned resource allocation problem with a long-standing literature in game theory (almost 100 years). However, its scope of application is still restricted by the lack of studies on the incomplete-information…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-09-12 Dong Quan Vu , Patrick Loiseau , Alonso Silva

We study the $K$-armed contextual dueling bandit problem, a sequential decision making setting in which the learner uses contextual information to make two decisions, but only observes \emph{preference-based feedback} suggesting that one…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-25 Aadirupa Saha , Akshay Krishnamurthy

Online model selection in Bayesian bandits raises a fundamental exploration challenge: When an environment instance is sampled from a prior distribution, how can we design an adaptive strategy that explores multiple bandit learners and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-23 Aida Afshar , Yuke Zhang , Aldo Pacchiano

I present the first algorithm for stochastic finite-armed bandits that simultaneously enjoys order-optimal problem-dependent regret and worst-case regret. Besides the theoretical results, the new algorithm is simple, efficient and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-02-25 Tor Lattimore

Bayesian bandit algorithms with approximate Bayesian inference have been widely used in real-world applications. Despite the superior practical performance, their theoretical justification is less investigated in the literature, especially…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-23 Ziyi Huang , Henry Lam , Haofeng Zhang

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-02-19 Hossein Esfandiari , Amin Karbasi , Abbas Mehrabian , Vahab Mirrokni

We consider Bayesian optimization using Gaussian Process models, also referred to as kernel-based bandit optimization. We study the methodology of exploring the domain using random samples drawn from a distribution. We show that this random…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-05 Sudeep Salgia , Sattar Vakili , Qing Zhao

We study finite-armed stochastic bandits where the rewards of each arm might be correlated to those of other arms. We introduce a novel phased algorithm that exploits the given structure to build confidence sets over the parameters of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-26 Andrea Tirinzoni , Alessandro Lazaric , Marcello Restelli

The objective of canonical multi-armed bandits is to identify and repeatedly select an arm with the largest reward, often in the form of the expected value of the arm's probability distribution. Such a utilitarian perspective and focus on…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-01 Meltem Tatlı , Arpan Mukherjee , Prashanth L. A. , Karthikeyan Shanmugam , Ali Tajer

Learning good interventions in a causal graph can be modelled as a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with side-information. First, we study this problem when interventions are more expensive than observations and a budget is specified.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-15 Vineet Nair , Vishakha Patil , Gaurav Sinha

In this paper, we propose a constant word (RAM model) algorithm for regret minimisation for both finite and infinite Stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) instances. Most of the existing regret minimisation algorithms need to remember the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-25 Arghya Roy Chaudhuri , Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan

The primary goal of my Ph.D. study is to develop provably efficient and practical algorithms for data-driven sequential decision-making under uncertainty. My work focuses on reinforcement learning (RL), multi-armed bandits, and their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-16 Zhiyong Wang

In the stochastic bandit problem, the goal is to maximize an unknown function via a sequence of noisy evaluations. Typically, the observation noise is assumed to be independent of the evaluation point and to satisfy a tail bound uniformly…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-04-20 Johannes Kirschner , Andreas Krause

Bandit convex optimization (BCO) is a general framework for online decision making under uncertainty. While tight regret bounds for general convex losses have been established, existing algorithms achieving these bounds have prohibitive…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Arun Suggala , Y. Jennifer Sun , Praneeth Netrapalli , Elad Hazan

We develop a new approach to obtaining high probability regret bounds for online learning with bandit feedback against an adaptive adversary. While existing approaches all require carefully constructing optimistic and biased loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-02 Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Mengxiao Zhang