Related papers: Optimal Top-Two Method for Best Arm Identification…
Motivated by the task of hyperparameter optimization, we introduce the non-stochastic best-arm identification problem. Within the multi-armed bandit literature, the cumulative regret objective enjoys algorithms and analyses for both the…
Learning paradigms based purely on offline data as well as those based solely on sequential online learning have been well-studied in the literature. In this paper, we consider combining offline data with online learning, an area less…
The best-arm identification (BAI) problem is one of the most fundamental problems in interactive machine learning, which has two flavors: the fixed-budget setting (FB) and the fixed-confidence setting (FC). For $K$-armed bandits with the…
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…
Stochastic multi-armed bandits are a sequential-decision-making framework, where, at each interaction step, the learner selects an arm and observes a stochastic reward. Within the context of best-arm identification (BAI) problems, the goal…
We propose a {\em novel} piecewise stationary linear bandit (PSLB) model, where the environment randomly samples a context from an unknown probability distribution at each changepoint, and the quality of an arm is measured by its return…
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…
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…
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…
The paper proposes a novel upper confidence bound (UCB) procedure for identifying the arm with the largest mean in a multi-armed bandit game in the fixed confidence setting using a small number of total samples. The procedure cannot be…
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…
We study the problem of Robust Outlier Arm Identification (ROAI), where the goal is to identify arms whose expected rewards deviate substantially from the majority, by adaptively sampling from their reward distributions. We compute the…
We study $(\epsilon, \delta)$-PAC best arm identification, where a decision-maker must identify an $\epsilon$-optimal arm with probability at least $1 - \delta$, while minimizing the number of arm pulls (samples). Most of the work on this…
In pure-exploration problems, information is gathered sequentially to answer a question on the stochastic environment. While best-arm identification for linear bandits has been extensively studied in recent years, few works have been…
The best arm identification problem in the multi-armed bandit setting is an excellent model of many real-world decision-making problems, yet it fails to capture the fact that in the real-world, safety constraints often must be met while…
In multi-armed bandits, the tasks of reward maximization and pure exploration are often at odds with each other. The former focuses on exploiting arms with the highest means, while the latter may require constant exploration across all…
This paper targets a variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem called good arm identification (GAI). GAI is a pure-exploration bandit problem with the goal to output as many good arms using as few samples as possible, where a…
Motivated by the cost heterogeneity in experimentation across different alternatives, we study the Best Arm Identification with Resource Constraints (BAIwRC) problem. The agent aims to identify the best arm under resource constraints, where…
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…
The knowledge gradient (KG) algorithm is a popular and effective algorithm for the best arm identification (BAI) problem. Due to the complex calculation of KG, theoretical analysis of this algorithm is difficult, and existing results are…