English
Related papers

Related papers: Worst-Case Optimal Multi-Armed Gaussian Best Arm I…

200 papers

We present an efficient and generalised procedure to accurately identify the best (or near best) performing algorithm for each sub-task in a multi-problem domain. Our approach treats this as a set of best arm identification problems for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Matthew Stephenson , Alex Newcombe , Eric Piette , Dennis Soemers

This work considers the problem of selective-sampling for best-arm identification. Given a set of potential options $\mathcal{Z}\subset\mathbb{R}^d$, a learner aims to compute with probability greater than $1-\delta$, $\arg\max_{z\in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-03 Romain Camilleri , Zhihan Xiong , Maryam Fazel , Lalit Jain , Kevin Jamieson

In this work I study the problem of adversarial perturbations to rewards, in a Multi-armed bandit (MAB) setting. Specifically, I focus on an adversarial attack to a UCB type best-arm identification policy applied to a stochastic MAB. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-14 Varsha Pendyala

We study the effect of reward variance heterogeneity in the approximate top-$m$ arm identification setting. In this setting, the reward for the $i$-th arm follows a $\sigma^2_i$-sub-Gaussian distribution, and the agent needs to incorporate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-12 Ruida Zhou , Chao Tian

In multi-armed bandit problems, the typical goal is to identify the arm with the highest reward. This paper explores a threshold-based bandit problem, aiming to select an arm based on its relation to a prescribed threshold \(\tau \). We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Chanakya Varude , Jay Chaudhary , Siddharth Kaushik , Prasanna Chaporkar

We address the problem of finding the maximizer of a nonlinear smooth function, that can only be evaluated point-wise, subject to constraints on the number of permitted function evaluations. This problem is also known as fixed-budget best…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-11-12 Matthew W. Hoffman , Bobak Shahriari , Nando de Freitas

Multi-armed bandits (MAB) model sequential decision making problems, in which a learner sequentially chooses arms with unknown reward distributions in order to maximize its cumulative reward. Most of the prior work on MAB assumes that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-03-22 Onur Atan , Cem Tekin , Mihaela van der Schaar

We address the problem of identifying the optimal policy with a fixed confidence level in a multi-armed bandit setup, when \emph{the arms are subject to linear constraints}. Unlike the standard best-arm identification problem which is well…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-26 Emil Carlsson , Debabrota Basu , Fredrik D. Johansson , Devdatt Dubhashi

We design and analyze VA-LUCB, a parameter-free algorithm, for identifying the best arm under the fixed-confidence setup and under a stringent constraint that the variance of the chosen arm is strictly smaller than a given threshold. An…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-16 Yunlong Hou , Vincent Y. F. Tan , Zixin Zhong

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

In this paper, we consider a multi-armed bandit (MAB) instance and study how to identify the best arm when arm commands are conveyed from a central learner to a distributed agent over a discrete memoryless channel (DMC). Depending on the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Merve Karakas , Osama Hanna , Lin F. Yang , Christina Fragouli

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

This work deals with parallel optimization of expensive objective functions which are modeled as sample realizations of Gaussian processes. The study is formalized as a Bayesian optimization problem, or continuous multi-armed bandit…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-09-04 Sébastien Marmin , Clément Chevalier , David Ginsbourger

We develop asymptotically optimal policies for the multi armed bandit (MAB), problem, under a cost constraint. This model is applicable in situations where each sample (or activation) from a population (bandit) incurs a known bandit…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-12-18 Apostolos N. Burnetas , Odysseas Kanavetas , Michael N. Katehakis

Algorithms for the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem play a central role in sequential decision-making and have been extensively explored both theoretically and numerically. While most classical approaches aim to identify the arm with the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Gabriel Turinici

In this paper, we introduce a multi-armed bandit problem termed max-min grouped bandits, in which the arms are arranged in possibly-overlapping groups, and the goal is to find the group whose worst arm has the highest mean reward. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-16 Zhenlin Wang , Jonathan Scarlett

In this paper we consider the problem of best-arm identification in multi-armed bandits in the fixed confidence setting, where the goal is to identify, with probability $1-\delta$ for some $\delta>0$, the arm with the highest mean reward in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-09-13 Samarth Gupta , Gauri Joshi , Osman Yağan

The improving multi-armed bandits problem is a formal model for allocating effort under uncertainty, motivated by scenarios such as investing research effort into new technologies, performing clinical trials, and hyperparameter selection…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Avrim Blum , Marten Garicano , Kavya Ravichandran , Dravyansh Sharma

Multi-armed Bandit (MAB) algorithms identify the best arm among multiple arms via exploration-exploitation trade-off without prior knowledge of arm statistics. Their usefulness in wireless radio, IoT, and robotics demand deployment on edge…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-06-08 S. V. Sai Santosh , Sumit J. Darak

This paper introduces the first asymptotically optimal strategy for a multi armed bandit (MAB) model under side constraints. The side constraints model situations in which bandit activations are limited by the availability of certain…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-10 Apostolos N. Burnetas , Odysseas Kanavetas , Michael N. Katehakis