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Stochastic multi-armed bandits (MABs) provide a fundamental reinforcement learning model to study sequential decision making in uncertain environments. The upper confidence bounds (UCB) algorithm gave birth to the renaissance of bandit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-11 Ambrus Tamás , Szabolcs Szentpéteri , Balázs Csanád Csáji

We introduce in this paper a new algorithm for Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problems. A machine learning paradigm popular within Cognitive Network related topics (e.g., Spectrum Sensing and Allocation). We focus on the case where the rewards…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-04-10 Wassim Jouini , Christophe Moy

We consider a variant of the classic multi-armed bandit problem where the expected reward of each arm is a function of an unknown parameter. The arms are divided into different groups, each of which has a common parameter. Therefore, when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-02-23 Zhiyang Wang , Ruida Zhou , Cong Shen

The regret lower bound of Lai and Robbins (1985), the gold standard for checking optimality of bandit algorithms, considers arm size fixed as sample size goes to infinity. We show that when arm size increases polynomially with sample size,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-09-06 Hock Peng Chan , Shouri Hu

In this paper, we study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, where the reward is driven by an unknown random variable. We propose a new variant of the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithm called Hellinger-UCB, which leverages the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-04-17 Ruibo Yang , Jiazhou Wang , Andrew Mullhaupt

While classical formulations of multi-armed bandit problems assume that each arm's reward is independent and stationary, real-world applications often involve non-stationary environments and interdependencies between arms. In particular,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Ryoma Sato , Shinji Ito

We study the stochastic Budgeted Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem, where a player chooses from $K$ arms with unknown expected rewards and costs. The goal is to maximize the total reward under a budget constraint. A player thus seeks to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-16 Marco Heyden , Vadim Arzamasov , Edouard Fouché , Klemens Böhm

Motivated by economic applications such as recommender systems, we study the behavior of stochastic bandits algorithms under \emph{strategic behavior} conducted by rational actors, i.e., the arms. Each arm is a \emph{self-interested}…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-16 Zhe Feng , David C. Parkes , Haifeng Xu

We propose $\tt RandUCB$, a bandit strategy that builds on theoretically derived confidence intervals similar to upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithms, but akin to Thompson sampling (TS), it uses randomization to trade off exploration and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-24 Sharan Vaswani , Abbas Mehrabian , Audrey Durand , Branislav Kveton

In this paper, we propose and evaluate different learning strategies based on Multi-Arm Bandit (MAB) algorithms. They allow Internet of Things (IoT) devices to improve their access to the network and their autonomy, while taking into…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2019-02-28 Remi Bonnefoi , Lilian Besson , Julio Manco-Vasquez , Christophe Moy

We study the fixed-confidence best-arm identification problem in unimodal bandits, in which the means of the arms increase with the index of the arm up to their maximum, then decrease. We derive two lower bounds on the stopping time of any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Riccardo Poiani , Marc Jourdan , Emilie Kaufmann , Rémy Degenne

Motivated by wireless networks where interference or channel state estimates provide partial insight into throughput, we study a variant of the classical stochastic multi-armed bandit problem in which the learner has limited access to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Arun Verma , Manjesh Kumar Hanawal , Arun Rajkumar

In this paper, we study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with graph feedback. Motivated by applications in clinical trials and recommendation systems, we assume that two arms are connected if and only if they are similar (i.e.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Han Qi , Fei Guo , Li Zhu , Qiaosheng Zhang

In this work, we address the open problem of finding low-complexity near-optimal multi-armed bandit algorithms for sequential decision making problems. Existing bandit algorithms are either sub-optimal and computationally simple (e.g.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-18 Fang Liu , Sinong Wang , Swapna Buccapatnam , Ness Shroff

We investigate a Bayesian $k$-armed bandit problem in the \emph{many-armed} regime, where $k \geq \sqrt{T}$ and $T$ represents the time horizon. Initially, and aligned with recent literature on many-armed bandit problems, we observe that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-21 Mohsen Bayati , Nima Hamidi , Ramesh Johari , Khashayar Khosravi

Sequential decision-making under uncertainty often involves multiple agents learning which actions (arms) yield the highest rewards through repeated interaction with a stochastic environment. This setting is commonly modeled by cooperative…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-25 Evagoras Makridis , Themistoklis Charalambous

In this memorial paper, we honor Tze Leung Lai's seminal contributions to the topic of multi-armed bandits, with a specific focus on his pioneering work on the upper confidence bound. We establish sharp non-asymptotic regret bounds for an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-07 Huachen Ren , Cun-Hui Zhang

We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with the graph-based feedback structure introduced by Mannor and Shamir. We analyze the performance of the two most prominent stochastic bandit algorithms, Thompson Sampling and Upper…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-17 Thodoris Lykouris , Eva Tardos , Drishti Wali

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) processes constitute a foundational subclass of reinforcement learning problems and represent a central topic in statistical decision theory, but are limited to simultaneous adaptive allocation and sequential test,…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-27 Li Yang , Xiaodong Yan , Dandan Jiang

We study a stochastic multi-armed bandit setting where arms are partitioned into known clusters, such that the mean rewards of arms within a cluster differ by at most a known threshold. While the clustering structure is known a priori, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-20 Aakash Gore , Prasanna Chaporkar