Related papers: Asymptotically Optimal Policies for Weakly Coupled…
We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in the presence of side-observations across actions that occur as a result of an underlying network structure. In our model, a bipartite graph captures the relationship between…
We consider a restless multi-armed bandit in which each arm can be in one of two states. When an arm is sampled, the state of the arm is not available to the sampler. Instead, a binary signal with a known randomness that depends on the…
This paper considers the multi-armed bandit problem with multiple simultaneous arm pulls. We develop a new `irrevocable' heuristic for this problem. In particular, we do not allow recourse to arms that were pulled at some point in the past…
Markov chains are the de facto finite-state model for stochastic dynamical systems, and Markov decision processes (MDPs) extend Markov chains by incorporating non-deterministic behaviors. Given an MDP and rewards on states, a classical…
We consider a finite-horizon multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in a Bayesian setting, for which we propose an information relaxation sampling framework. With this framework, we define an intuitive family of control policies that include…
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…
In dynamic programming and reinforcement learning, the policy for the sequential decision making of an agent in a stochastic environment is usually determined by expressing the goal as a scalar reward function and seeking a policy that…
We study a new model-free algorithm to compute $\varepsilon$-optimal policies for average reward Markov decision processes, in the weakly communicating case. Given a generative model, our procedure combines a recursive sampling technique…
The Combinatorial Multi-Armed Bandit problem is a sequential decision-making problem in which an agent selects a set of arms on each round, observes feedback for each of these arms and aims to maximize a known reward function of the arms it…
We consider discrete-time Markov Decision Processes with Borel state and action spaces and universally measurable policies. For several long-run average cost criteria, we establish the following optimality results: the optimal average cost…
We study the multi-armed bandit problem with arms which are Markov chains with rewards. In the finite-horizon setting, the celebrated Gittins indices do not apply, and the exact solution is intractable. We provide approximation algorithms…
We study a decentralized multi-agent multi-armed bandit problem in which multiple clients are connected by time dependent random graphs provided by an environment. The reward distributions of each arm vary across clients and rewards are…
In many sequential decision-making problems we may want to manage risk by minimizing some measure of variability in rewards in addition to maximizing a standard criterion. Variance related risk measures are among the most common…
Markov automata combine non-determinism, probabilistic branching, and exponentially distributed delays. This compositional variant of continuous-time Markov decision processes is used in reliability engineering, performance evaluation and…
We provide a framework to analyse control policies for the restless Markovian bandit model, under both finite and infinite time horizon. We show that when the population of arms goes to infinity, the value of the optimal control policy…
This paper considers a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in which multiple mobile agents receive rewards by sampling from a collection of spatially dispersed stochastic processes, called bandits. The goal is to formulate a decentralized…
Learning and optimal control under robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) have received increasing attention, yet most existing theory, algorithms, and applications focus on finite-horizon or discounted models. Long-run average-reward…
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…
Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…
We introduce the Lyapunov approach to optimal control problems of average risk-sensitive Markov control processes with general risk maps. Motivated by applications in particular to behavioral economics, we consider possibly non-convex risk…