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We consider the inverse problem of multi-armed bandits (IMAB) that are widely used in neuroscience and psychology research for behavior modelling. We first show that the IMAB problem is not convex in general, but can be relaxed to a convex…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2025-06-27 Hao Zhu , Joschka Boedecker

Pure exploration in multi-armed bandits has emerged as an important framework for modeling decision-making and search under uncertainty. In modern applications, however, one is often faced with a tremendously large number of options. Even…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Parth K. Thaker , Mohit Malu , Nikhil Rao , Gautam Dasarathy

Multi-armed bandits (MAB) model sequential decision making problems, in which a learner sequentially chooses arms with unknown reward distributions in order to maximize its cumulative reward. Most of the prior work on MAB assumes that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-03-22 Onur Atan , Cem Tekin , Mihaela van der Schaar

We study the finite-horizon Restless Multi-Armed Bandit (RMAB) problem with $N$ homogeneous arms. Prior work has shown that when an RMAB satisfies a non-degeneracy condition, Linear-Programming-based (LP-based) policies derived from the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-27 Chen Yan , Weina Wang , Lei Ying

Partially observable restless multi-armed bandits have found numerous applications including in recommendation systems, communication systems, public healthcare outreach systems, and in operations research. We study multi-action partially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Rahul Meshram , Kesav Kaza

Combinatorial Multi-Armed Bandit with fairness constraints is a framework where multiple arms form a super arm and can be pulled in each round under uncertainty to maximize cumulative rewards while ensuring the minimum average reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-14 Xiaoyi Wu , Bo Ji , Bin Li

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems are widely applied to online optimization tasks that require balancing exploration and exploitation. In practical scenarios, these tasks often involve multiple conflicting objectives, giving rise to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Mansoor Davoodi , Setareh Maghsudi

We consider a resource-aware variant of the classical multi-armed bandit problem: In each round, the learner selects an arm and determines a resource limit. It then observes a corresponding (random) reward, provided the (random) amount of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Viktor Bengs , Eyke Hüllermeier

We consider a stochastic multi-armed bandit setting where reward must be actively queried for it to be observed. We provide tight lower and upper problem-dependent guarantees on both the regret and the number of queries. Interestingly, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-28 Nadav Merlis , Yonathan Efroni , Shie Mannor

Bandit optimization usually refers to the class of online optimization problems with limited feedback, namely, a decision maker uses only the objective value at the current point to make a new decision and does not have access to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Yuriy Dorn , Aleksandr Katrutsa , Ilgam Latypov , Anastasiia Soboleva

We consider a multi-armed bandit setting with finitely many arms, in which each arm yields an $M$-dimensional vector reward upon selection. We assume that the reward of each dimension (a.k.a. {\em objective}) is generated independently of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-24 Zhirui Chen , P. N. Karthik , Yeow Meng Chee , Vincent Y. F. Tan

We consider the channel access problem in a multi-channel opportunistic communication system with imperfect channel sensing, where the state of each channel evolves as a non independent and identically distributed Markov process. This…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2015-06-05 Kehao Wang , Lin Chen , Quan Liu , Khaldoun Al Agha

Recently proposed reward-conditioned policies (RCPs) offer an appealing alternative in reinforcement learning. Compared with policy gradient methods, policy learning in RCPs is simpler since it is based on supervised learning, and unlike…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Kai Xu , Farid Tajaddodianfar , Ben Allison

The trade-off between the cost of acquiring and processing data, and uncertainty due to a lack of data is fundamental in machine learning. A basic instance of this trade-off is the problem of deciding when to make noisy and costly…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-03-30 Christopher R. Dance , Tomi Silander

The success of many healthcare programs depends on participants' adherence. We consider the problem of scheduling interventions in low resource settings (e.g., placing timely support calls from health workers) to increase adherence and/or…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Panayiotis Danassis , Shresth Verma , Jackson A. Killian , Aparna Taneja , Milind Tambe

In this paper we investigate the problem of stochastic multi-armed bandits (MAB) in the (local) differential privacy (DP/LDP) model. Unlike previous results that assume bounded/sub-Gaussian reward distributions, we focus on the setting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-25 Youming Tao , Yulian Wu , Peng Zhao , Di Wang

We study the best-arm identification problem in multi-armed bandits with stochastic, potentially private rewards, when the goal is to identify the arm with the highest quantile at a fixed, prescribed level. First, we propose a (non-private)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-12-06 Kontantinos E. Nikolakakis , Dionysios S. Kalogerias , Or Sheffet , Anand D. Sarwate

We consider the problem of sequentially allocating resources in a censored semi-bandits setup, where the learner allocates resources at each step to the arms and observes loss. The loss depends on two hidden parameters, one specific to the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-14 Arun Verma , Manjesh K. Hanawal , Arun Rajkumar , Raman Sankaran

In mixed-autonomy traffic networks, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are required to make sequential routing decisions under uncertainty caused by dynamic and heterogeneous interactions with human-driven vehicles (HDVs). Early-stage greedy…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-12 Yu Bai , Yiming Li , Xi Xiong

This paper studies a multi-armed bandit (MAB) version of the range-searching problem. In its basic form, range searching considers as input a set of points (on the real line) and a collection of (real) intervals. Here, with each specified…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-05 Siddharth Barman , Ramakrishnan Krishnamurthy , Saladi Rahul