Related papers: The Batch Complexity of Bandit Pure Exploration

We consider the multi armed bandit problem in non-stationary environments. Based on the Bayesian method, we propose a variant of Thompson Sampling which can be used in both rested and restless bandit scenarios. Applying discounting to the…

We consider a Bayesian budgeted multi-armed bandit problem, in which each arm consumes a different amount of resources when selected and there is a budget constraint on the total amount of resources that can be used. Budgeted Thompson…

We give a complete characterization of the complexity of best-arm identification in one-parameter bandit problems. We prove a new, tight lower bound on the sample complexity. We propose the `Track-and-Stop' strategy, which we prove to be…

In the classical best arm identification (Best-$1$-Arm) problem, we are given $n$ stochastic bandit arms, each associated with a reward distribution with an unknown mean. We would like to identify the arm with the largest mean with…

We study the preference-based pure exploration problem for bandits with vector-valued rewards. The rewards are ordered using a (given) preference cone $\mathcal{C}$ and our goal is to identify the set of Pareto optimal arms. First, to…

We consider the framework of stochastic multi-armed bandit problems and study the possibilities and limitations of forecasters that perform an on-line exploration of the arms. These forecasters are assessed in terms of their simple regret,…

Decision making under uncertain environments in the maximization of expected reward while minimizing its risk is one of the ubiquitous problems in many subjects. Here, we introduce a novel problem setting in stochastic bandit optimization…

Active learning methods have shown great promise in reducing the number of samples necessary for learning. As automated learning systems are adopted into real-time, real-world decision-making pipelines, it is increasingly important that…

Many real-world functions are defined over both categorical and category-specific continuous variables and thus cannot be optimized by traditional Bayesian optimization (BO) methods. To optimize such functions, we propose a new method that…

Motivated by practical applications, chiefly clinical trials, we study the regret achievable for stochastic bandits under the constraint that the employed policy must split trials into a small number of batches. We propose a simple policy,…

The multi-armed bandit(MAB) is a classical sequential decision problem. Most work requires assumptions about the reward distribution (e.g., bounded), while practitioners may have difficulty obtaining information about these distributions to…

A key feature of sequential decision making under uncertainty is a need to balance between exploiting--choosing the best action according to the current knowledge, and exploring--obtaining information about values of other actions. The…

In algorithm optimization in reinforcement learning, how to deal with the exploration-exploitation dilemma is particularly important. Multi-armed bandit problem can optimize the proposed solutions by changing the reward distribution to…

We focus on the problem of best-arm identification in a stochastic multi-arm bandit with temporally decreasing variances for the arms' rewards. We model arm rewards as Gaussian random variables with fixed means and variances that decrease…

We consider the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem and the contextual bandit problem with historical observations and pre-clustered arms. The historical observations can contain any number of instances for each arm, and the…

Efficiently trading off exploration and exploitation is one of the key challenges in online Reinforcement Learning (RL). Most works achieve this by carefully estimating the model uncertainty and following the so-called optimistic model.…

We present a PAC-Bayesian analysis of lifelong learning. In the lifelong learning problem, a sequence of learning tasks is observed one-at-a-time, and the goal is to transfer information acquired from previous tasks to new learning tasks.…

We provide a simple method to combine stochastic bandit algorithms. Our approach is based on a "meta-UCB" procedure that treats each of $N$ individual bandit algorithms as arms in a higher-level $N$-armed bandit problem that we solve with a…

We investigate the problem dependent regime in the stochastic Thresholding Bandit problem (TBP) under several shape constraints. In the TBP, the objective of the learner is to output, at the end of a sequential game, the set of arms whose…

For the stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem from a constrained model that generalizes the classical one, we show that an asymptotic optimality is achievable by a simple strategy extended from the $\epsilon_t$-greedy strategy. We…