English
Related papers

Related papers: Cost Aware Best Arm Identification

200 papers

Motivated by recursive learning in Markov Decision Processes, this paper studies best-arm identification in bandit problems where each arm's reward is drawn from a multinomial distribution with a known support. We compare the performance {…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-19 Mehrasa Ahmadipour , élise Crepon , Aurélien Garivier

We study the problem of best-arm identification in a distributed variant of the multi-armed bandit setting, with a central learner and multiple agents. Each agent is associated with an arm of the bandit, generating stochastic rewards…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-02 Fathima Zarin Faizal , Adway Girish , Manjesh Kumar Hanawal , Nikhil Karamchandani

The challenge of identifying the best feasible arm within a fixed budget has attracted considerable interest in recent years. However, a notable gap remains in the literature: the exact exponential rate at which the error probability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-04 Jie Bian , Vincent Y. F. Tan

Consider the problem of best arm identification with a security constraint. Specifically, assume a setup of stochastic linear bandits with $K$ arms of dimension $d$. In each arm pull, the player receives a reward that is the sum of the dot…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Asaf Cohen , Onur Günlü

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a class of global optimization algorithms, suitable for minimizing an expensive objective function in as few function evaluations as possible. While BO budgets are typically given in iterations, this implicitly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-25 Eric Hans Lee , Valerio Perrone , Cedric Archambeau , Matthias Seeger

In the Best-$K$ identification problem (Best-$K$-Arm), we are given $N$ stochastic bandit arms with unknown reward distributions. Our goal is to identify the $K$ arms with the largest means with high confidence, by drawing samples from the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-22 Haotian Jiang , Jian Li , Mingda Qiao

We consider incentivized exploration: a version of multi-armed bandits where the choice of arms is controlled by self-interested agents, and the algorithm can only issue recommendations. The algorithm controls the flow of information, and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Mark Sellke , Aleksandrs Slivkins

Motivated by the need to efficiently identify multiple candidates in high trial-and-error cost tasks such as drug discovery, we propose a near-optimal algorithm to identify all {\epsilon}-best arms (i.e., those at most {\epsilon} worse than…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-02 Zhekai Li , Tianyi Ma , Cheng Hua , Ruihao Zhu

In multi-objective decision-making with hierarchical preferences, lexicographic bandits provide a natural framework for optimizing multiple objectives in a prioritized order. In this setting, a learner repeatedly selects arms and observes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Bo Xue , Yuanyu Wan , Zhichao Lu , Qingfu Zhang

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 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

We consider the fixed-budget best arm identification problem where the goal is to find the arm of the largest mean with a fixed number of samples. It is known that the probability of misidentifying the best arm is exponentially small to the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-10-28 Junpei Komiyama , Taira Tsuchiya , Junya Honda

We study the Improving Multi-Armed Bandit (IMAB) problem, where the reward obtained from an arm increases with the number of pulls it receives. This model provides an elegant abstraction for many real-world problems in domains such as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-22 Vishakha Patil , Vineet Nair , Ganesh Ghalme , Arindam Khan

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

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

A standard assumption adopted in the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework is that the mean rewards are constant over time. This assumption can be restrictive in the business world as decision-makers often face an evolving environment where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Ningyuan Chen , Chun Wang , Longlin Wang

We consider a good arm identification problem in a stochastic bandit setting with multi-objectives, where each arm $i \in [K]$ is associated with a distribution $D_i$ defined over $R^M$. For each round $t$, the player pulls an arm $i_t$ and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-30 Xuanke Jiang , Sherief Hashima , Kohei Hatano , Eiji Takimoto

The 1-identification problem is a fundamental pure-exploration problem in multi-armed bandits. An agent aims to determine whether there exists an arm whose mean reward exceeds a known threshold $\mu_0$, or to output \textsf{None} otherwise.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Zitian Li , Wang Chi Cheung

While experimental design often focuses on selecting the single best alternative from a finite set (e.g., in ranking and selection or best-arm identification), many pure-exploration problems pursue richer goals. Given a specific goal,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-28 Chao Qin , Wei You

We study best-arm identification in stochastic multi-armed bandits under the fixed-confidence setting, focusing on instances with multiple optimal arms. Unlike prior work that addresses the unknown-number-of-optimal-arms case, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Lan V. Truong