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Related papers: Minimax and Bayes Optimal Best-Arm Identification

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We consider best arm identification in the multi-armed bandit problem. Assuming certain continuity conditions of the prior, we characterize the rate of the Bayesian simple regret. Differing from Bayesian regret minimization (Lai, 1987), the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-27 Junpei Komiyama , Kaito Ariu , Masahiro Kato , Chao Qin

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-02 Dang Nguyen , Sunil Gupta , Santu Rana , Alistair Shilton , Svetha Venkatesh

We study sequential experiments where sampling is costly and a decision-maker aims to determine the best treatment for full scale implementation by (1) adaptively allocating units between two possible treatments, and (2) stopping the…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-05-06 Karun Adusumilli

This paper studies the fixed-confidence best arm identification (BAI) problem in the bandit framework in the canonical single-parameter exponential models. For this problem, many policies have been proposed, but most of them require solving…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-12 Jongyeong Lee , Junya Honda , Masashi Sugiyama

Best-arm identification (BAI) in a fixed-budget setting is a bandit problem where the learning agent maximizes the probability of identifying the optimal (best) arm after a fixed number of observations. Most works on this topic study…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Mohammad Javad Azizi , Branislav Kveton , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh

We study the best-arm identification (BAI) problem with a fixed budget and contextual (covariate) information. In each round of an adaptive experiment, after observing contextual information, we choose a treatment arm using past…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-05 Masahiro Kato , Masaaki Imaizumi , Takuya Ishihara , Toru Kitagawa

Top-$2$ methods have become popular in solving the best arm identification (BAI) problem. The best arm, or the arm with the largest mean amongst finitely many, is identified through an algorithm that at any sequential step independently…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-17 Agniv Bandyopadhyay , Sandeep Juneja , Shubhada Agrawal

We formulate, analyze and solve the problem of best arm identification with fairness constraints on subpopulations (BAICS). Standard best arm identification problems aim at selecting an arm that has the largest expected reward where the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-11 Yuhang Wu , Zeyu Zheng , Tingyu Zhu

We propose a new integrated phase I/II trial design to identify the most efficacious dose combination that also satisfies certain safety requirements for drug-combination trials. We first take a Bayesian copula-type model for dose finding…

Applications · Statistics 2011-08-09 Ying Yuan , Guosheng Yin

We study best-arm identification in stochastic multi-armed bandits under the fixed-confidence setting, focusing on instances with multiple optimal arms. Unlike prior work that addresses the unknown-number-of-optimal-arms case, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Lan V. Truong

Motivated by real-world applications that necessitate responsible experimentation, we introduce the problem of best arm identification (BAI) with minimal regret. This innovative variant of the multi-armed bandit problem elegantly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-30 Junwen Yang , Vincent Y. F. Tan , Tianyuan Jin

We study the fixed-budget best-arm identification (BAI) problem in non-stationary linear bandits. Concretely, given a fixed time budget $T\in \mathbb{N}$, finite arm set $\mathcal{X} \subset \mathbb{R}^d$, and a potentially adversarial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-12 Leo Maynard-Zhang , Zhihan Xiong , Kevin Jamieson , Maryam Fazel

We study the problem of estimating a continuous ability parameter from sequential binary responses by actively asking questions with varying difficulties, a setting that arises naturally in adaptive testing and online preference learning.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-10 Sanghwa Kim , Dohyun Ahn , Seungki Min

This work considers the problem of selective-sampling for best-arm identification. Given a set of potential options $\mathcal{Z}\subset\mathbb{R}^d$, a learner aims to compute with probability greater than $1-\delta$, $\arg\max_{z\in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-03 Romain Camilleri , Zhihan Xiong , Maryam Fazel , Lalit Jain , Kevin Jamieson

Given a finite set of unknown distributions or arms that can be sampled, we consider the problem of identifying the one with the maximum mean using a $\delta$-correct algorithm (an adaptive, sequential algorithm that restricts the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-27 Shubhada Agrawal , Sandeep Juneja , Peter Glynn

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Shunta Nonaga , Koji Tabata , Yuta Mizuno , Tamiki Komatsuzaki

We investigate the problem of jointly testing a pair of composite hypotheses and, depending on the test result, estimating a random parameter under distributional uncertainties. Specifically, it is assumed that the distribution of the data…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-27 Dominik Reinhard , Michael Fauß , Abdelhak M. Zoubir

It is generally believed that ensemble approaches, which combine multiple algorithms or models, can outperform any single algorithm at machine learning tasks, such as prediction. In this paper, we propose Bayesian convex and linear…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2014-03-07 Yun Yang , David B. Dunson

We study the problem of identifying the best arm in a multi-armed bandit environment when each arm is a time-homogeneous and ergodic discrete-time Markov process on a common, finite state space. The state evolution on each arm is governed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-30 P. N. Karthik , Kota Srinivas Reddy , Vincent Y. F. Tan

We consider the problem of the best arm identification in the presence of stochastic constraints, where there is a finite number of arms associated with multiple performance measures. The goal is to identify the arm that optimizes the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-08 Le Yang , Siyang Gao , Cheng Li , Yi Wang