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Online model-free reinforcement learning (RL) methods with continuous actions are playing a prominent role when dealing with real-world applications such as Robotics. However, when confronted to non-stationary environments, these methods…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-10-07 Mehdi Khamassi , Costas Tzafestas

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

The Kalman filter is an algorithm for the estimation of hidden variables in dynamical systems under linear Gauss-Markov assumptions with widespread applications across different fields. Recently, its Bayesian interpretation has received a…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2021-11-23 Manuel Baltieri , Takuya Isomura

Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) algorithms are widely used in recommender systems that require continuous, incremental learning. A core aspect of MABs is the exploration-exploitation trade-off: choosing between exploiting items likely to be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Pedro R. Pires , Gregorio F. Azevedo , Pietro L. Campos , Rafael T. Sereicikas , Tiago A. Almeida

In this paper, we study the stochastic combinatorial multi-armed bandit (CMAB) framework that allows a general nonlinear reward function, whose expected value may not depend only on the means of the input random variables but possibly on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-23 Wei Chen , Wei Hu , Fu Li , Jian Li , Yu Liu , Pinyan Lu

We study a specific \textit{combinatorial pure exploration stochastic bandit problem} where the learner aims at finding the set of arms whose means are above a given threshold, up to a given precision, and \textit{for a fixed time horizon}.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-05-30 Andrea Locatelli , Maurilio Gutzeit , Alexandra Carpentier

In a linear stochastic bandit model, each arm is a vector in an Euclidean space and the observed return at each time step is an unknown linear function of the chosen arm at that time step. In this paper, we investigate the problem of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-25 Qiyu Kang , Wee Peng Tay

We present a formal model of human decision-making in explore-exploit tasks using the context of multi-armed bandit problems, where the decision-maker must choose among multiple options with uncertain rewards. We address the standard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-23 Paul Reverdy , Vaibhav Srivastava , Naomi E. Leonard

We study the Combinatorial Pure Exploration problem with Continuous and Separable reward functions (CPE-CS) in the stochastic multi-armed bandit setting. In a CPE-CS instance, we are given several stochastic arms with unknown distributions,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-05-07 Weiran Huang , Jungseul Ok , Liang Li , Wei Chen

We propose combinatorial cascading bandits, a class of partial monitoring problems where at each step a learning agent chooses a tuple of ground items subject to constraints and receives a reward if and only if the weights of all chosen…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-18 Branislav Kveton , Zheng Wen , Azin Ashkan , Csaba Szepesvari

We introduce the "inverse bandit" problem of estimating the rewards of a multi-armed bandit instance from observing the learning process of a low-regret demonstrator. Existing approaches to the related problem of inverse reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-02-23 Wenshuo Guo , Kumar Krishna Agrawal , Aditya Grover , Vidya Muthukumar , Ashwin Pananjady

We study a nonstationary bandit problem where rewards depend on both actions and latent states, the latter governed by unknown linear dynamics. Crucially, the state dynamics also depend on the actions, resulting in tension between…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Sunmook Choi , Yahya Sattar , Yassir Jedra , Maryam Fazel , Sarah Dean

Motivated by applications such as online labor markets we consider a variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where we have a collection of arms representing strategic agents with different performance characteristics. The…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Seyed A. Esmaeili , Suho Shin , Aleksandrs Slivkins

Bandit algorithms have various application in safety-critical systems, where it is important to respect the system constraints that rely on the bandit's unknown parameters at every round. In this paper, we formulate a linear stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-19 Sanae Amani , Mahnoosh Alizadeh , Christos Thrampoulidis

In a typical stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, the objective is often to maximize the expected sum of rewards over some time horizon $T$. While the choice of a strategy that accomplishes that is optimal with no additional information,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Reda Alami , Mohammed Mahfoud , Mastane Achab

Inspired by the Reward-Biased Maximum Likelihood Estimate method of adaptive control, we propose RBMLE -- a novel family of learning algorithms for stochastic multi-armed bandits (SMABs). For a broad range of SMABs including both the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-26 Xi Liu , Ping-Chun Hsieh , Anirban Bhattacharya , P. R. Kumar

The Centralized Training with Decentralized Execution (CTDE) paradigm is widely used in cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning. However, conventional methods based on CTDE can suffer from value underestimation and converge to…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Ruoning Zhang , Siying Wang , Wenyu Chen , Yang Zhou , Zhitong Zhao , Zixuan Zhang , Ruijie Zhang , Stefano V. Albrecht

Boltzmann exploration is a classic strategy for sequential decision-making under uncertainty, and is one of the most standard tools in Reinforcement Learning (RL). Despite its widespread use, there is virtually no theoretical understanding…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-11-08 Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi , Claudio Gentile , Gábor Lugosi , Gergely Neu

The celebrated multi-armed bandit problem in decision theory models the basic trade-off between exploration, or learning about the state of a system, and exploitation, or utilizing the system. In this paper we study the variant of the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2013-06-19 Sudipto Guha , Kamesh Munagala

Stochastic multi-armed bandits are a sequential-decision-making framework, where, at each interaction step, the learner selects an arm and observes a stochastic reward. Within the context of best-arm identification (BAI) problems, the goal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-15 Riccardo Poiani , Alberto Maria Metelli , Marcello Restelli