English
Related papers

Related papers: Preference-based Pure Exploration

200 papers

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-06-10 Marc Jourdan , Rémy Degenne

Multi-objective bandits have attracted increasing attention for their broad applicability, with \(d\)-dimensional reward vectors inducing Pareto regret. There has been a subtle debate over whether this added structure makes the problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Changkun Guan , Mengfan Xu

Despite the recent success of representation learning in sequential decision making, the study of the pure exploration scenario (i.e., identify the best option and minimize the sample complexity) is still limited. In this paper, we study…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-31 Yihan Du , Longbo Huang , Wen Sun

Exploration policies in Bayesian bandits maximize the average reward over problem instances drawn from some distribution $\mathcal{P}$. In this work, we learn such policies for an unknown distribution $\mathcal{P}$ using samples from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Craig Boutilier , Chih-Wei Hsu , Branislav Kveton , Martin Mladenov , Csaba Szepesvari , Manzil Zaheer

In the Best-$K$ identification problem (Best-$K$-Arm), we are given $N$ stochastic bandit arms with unknown reward distributions. Our goal is to identify the $K$ arms with the largest means with high confidence, by drawing samples from the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-22 Haotian Jiang , Jian Li , Mingda Qiao

We study a novel pure exploration problem: the $\epsilon$-Thresholding Bandit Problem (TBP) with fixed confidence in stochastic linear bandits. We prove a lower bound for the sample complexity and extend an algorithm designed for Best Arm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-16 Eduardo Ochoa Rivera , Ambuj Tewari

We consider the problem of finding, through adaptive sampling, which of $n$ options (arms) has the largest mean. Our objective is to determine a rule which identifies the best arm with a fixed minimum confidence using as few observations as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-17 MohammadJavad Azizi , Sheldon M Ross , Zhengyu Zhang

We consider a bandit problem over a graph where the rewards are not directly observed. Instead, the decision maker can compare two nodes and receive (stochastic) information pertaining to the difference in their value. The graph structure…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-09-13 Dotan Di Castro , Claudio Gentile , Shie Mannor

We study the problem of best arm identification in linearly parameterised multi-armed bandits. Given a set of feature vectors $\mathcal{X}\subset\mathbb{R}^d,$ a confidence parameter $\delta$ and an unknown vector $\theta^*,$ the goal is to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-16 Mohammadi Zaki , Avi Mohan , Aditya Gopalan

In the multiarmed bandit problem a gambler chooses an arm of a slot machine to pull considering a tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. We study the stochastic bandit problem where each arm has a reward distribution supported in a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2013-03-29 Junya Honda , Akimichi Takemura

The combinatorial pure exploration of causal bandits is the following online learning task: given a causal graph with unknown causal inference distributions, in each round we choose a subset of variables to intervene or do no intervention,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-15 Nuoya Xiong , Wei Chen

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-26 Andrea Tirinzoni , Alessandro Lazaric , Marcello Restelli

We consider a multi-armed bandit problem where the decision maker can explore and exploit different arms at every round. The exploited arm adds to the decision maker's cumulative reward (without necessarily observing the reward) while the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-03 Orly Avner , Shie Mannor , Ohad Shamir

We study the problem of contextual combinatorial semi-bandits, where input contexts are mapped into subsets of size $m$ of a collection of $K$ possible actions. In each round, the learner observes the realized reward of the predicted…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Liad Erez , Tomer Koren

In this paper, we introduce the Preselection Bandit problem, in which the learner preselects a subset of arms (choice alternatives) for a user, which then chooses the final arm from this subset. The learner is not aware of the user's…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-23 Viktor Bengs , Eyke Hüllermeier

The contextual bandit literature has traditionally focused on algorithms that address the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. In particular, greedy algorithms that exploit current estimates without any exploration may be sub-optimal in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-04-21 Hamsa Bastani , Mohsen Bayati , Khashayar Khosravi

Recent advances in bandit tools and techniques for sequential learning are steadily enabling new applications and are promising the resolution of a range of challenging related problems. We study the game tree search problem, where the goal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-07 Emilie Kaufmann , Wouter Koolen

Motivated by an open direction in existing literature, we study the 1-identification problem, a fundamental multi-armed bandit formulation on pure exploration. The goal is to determine whether there exists an arm whose mean reward is at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-21 Zitian Li , Wang Chi Cheung

Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) is a popular choice for solving sequential anytime problems. However, it depends on a numeric feedback signal, which can be difficult to define. Real-time MCTS is a variant which may only rarely encounter…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-09-20 Tobias Joppen , Christian Wirth , Johannes Fürnkranz

We study finite-armed semiparametric bandits, where each arm's reward combines a linear component with an unknown, potentially adversarial shift. This model strictly generalizes classical linear bandits and reflects complexities common in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-18 Seok-Jin Kim , Gi-Soo Kim , Min-hwan Oh