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The efficiency of any metaheuristic algorithm largely depends on the way of balancing local intensive exploitation and global diverse exploration. Studies show that bat algorithm can provide a good balance between these two key components…

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…

Combinatorial bandits with semi-bandit feedback generalize multi-armed bandits, where the agent chooses sets of arms and observes a noisy reward for each arm contained in the chosen set. The action set satisfies a given structure such as…

Combinatorial bandits extend the classical bandit framework to settings where the learner selects multiple arms in each round, motivated by applications such as online recommendation and assortment optimization. While extensions of upper…

This paper considers the problem of combinatorial multi-armed bandits with semi-bandit feedback and a cardinality constraint on the super-arm size. Existing algorithms for solving this problem typically involve two key sub-routines: (1) a…

Multi-armed Bandits (MABs) are increasingly employed in online platforms and e-commerce to optimize decision making for personalized user experiences. In this work, we focus on the Contextual Bandit problem with linear rewards, under…

Normalization techniques such as Batch Normalization have been applied successfully for training deep neural networks. Yet, despite its apparent empirical benefits, the reasons behind the success of Batch Normalization are mostly…

In value-based deep reinforcement learning with replay memories, the batch size parameter specifies how many transitions to sample for each gradient update. Although critical to the learning process, this value is typically not adjusted…

The multi-armed bandits (MAB) framework is a widely used approach for sequential decision-making, where a decision-maker selects an arm in each round with the goal of maximizing long-term rewards. In many practical applications, such as…

Motivated by applications such as online labor markets we consider a variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where we have a collection of arms representing strategic agents with different performance characteristics. The…

The $K$-armed dueling bandit problem, where the feedback is in the form of noisy pairwise comparisons, has been widely studied. Previous works have only focused on the sequential setting where the policy adapts after every comparison.…

We study the problem of best-arm identification with fixed confidence in stochastic linear bandits. The objective is to identify the best arm with a given level of certainty while minimizing the sampling budget. We devise a simple algorithm…

We consider the combinatorial bandits problem with semi-bandit feedback under finite sampling budget constraints, in which the learner can carry out its action only for a limited number of times specified by an overall budget. The action is…

Stochastic delays in feedback lead to unstable sequential learning using multi-armed bandits. Recently, empirical Bayesian shrinkage has been shown to improve reward estimation in bandit learning. Here, we propose a novel adaptation to…

Contextual multi-armed bandits are classical models in reinforcement learning for sequential decision-making associated with individual information. A widely-used policy for bandits is Thompson Sampling, where samples from a data-driven…

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…

We study the problem of stochastic combinatorial pure exploration (CPE), where an agent sequentially pulls a set of single arms (a.k.a. a super arm) and tries to find the best super arm. Among a variety of problem settings of the CPE, we…

We consider a special case of bandit problems, namely batched bandits. Motivated by natural restrictions of recommender systems and e-commerce platforms, we assume that a learning agent observes responses batched in groups over a certain…

We study the combinatorial semi-bandit problem where an agent selects a subset of base arms and receives individual feedback. While this generalizes the classical multi-armed bandit and has broad applicability, its scalability is limited by…

Algorithm selection is typically based on models of algorithm performance, learned during a separate offline training sequence, which can be prohibitively expensive. In recent work, we adopted an online approach, in which a performance…