Related papers: EVaR-Optimal Arm Identification in Bandits

We study bandit best-arm identification with arbitrary and potentially adversarial rewards. A simple random uniform learner obtains the optimal rate of error in the adversarial scenario. However, this type of strategy is suboptimal when the…

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…

We introduce a new graphical bilinear bandit problem where a learner (or a \emph{central entity}) allocates arms to the nodes of a graph and observes for each edge a noisy bilinear reward representing the interaction between the two end…

We consider the correlated multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem in which the rewards associated with each arm are modeled by a multivariate Gaussian random variable, and we investigate the influence of the assumptions in the Bayesian prior on…

A standard assumption adopted in the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework is that the mean rewards are constant over time. This assumption can be restrictive in the business world as decision-makers often face an evolving environment where…

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is an active learning framework that aims to select the best among a set of actions by sequentially observing rewards. Recently, it has become popular for a number of applications over wireless networks,…

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…

The deployment of Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) has become commonplace in many economic applications. However, regret guarantees for even state-of-the-art linear bandit algorithms (such as Optimism in the Face of Uncertainty Linear bandit…

When multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms allocate pulls among competing arms, the resulting allocation can exhibit huge variation. This is particularly harmful in modern applications such as learning-enhanced platform operations and…

We introduce the functional bandit problem, where the objective is to find an arm that optimises a known functional of the unknown arm-reward distributions. These problems arise in many settings such as maximum entropy methods in natural…

We consider fixed-budget best-arm identification in two-armed Gaussian bandit problems. One of the longstanding open questions is the existence of an optimal strategy under which the probability of misidentification matches a lower bound.…

We study an infinite-armed bandit problem where actions' mean rewards are initially sampled from a reservoir distribution. Most prior works in this setting focused on stationary rewards (Berry et al., 1997; Wang et al., 2008; Bonald and…

In the classic Bayesian restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problem, there are $N$ arms, with rewards on all arms evolving at each time as Markov chains with known parameters. A player seeks to activate $K \geq 1$ arms at each time in order…

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) is a widely adopted framework for sequential decision-making under uncertainty. Traditional bandit algorithms rely solely on online data, which tends to be scarce as it must be gathered during the online phase when…

We consider a stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem motivated by ``large'' action spaces, and endowed with a population of arms containing exactly $K$ arm-types, each characterized by a distinct mean reward. The decision maker is…

This paper studies a new variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandits problem where auxiliary information about the arm rewards is available in the form of control variates. In many applications like queuing and wireless networks, the arm…

A recent line of research focuses on the study of the stochastic multi-armed bandits problem (MAB), in the case where temporal correlations of specific structure are imposed between the player's actions and the reward distributions of the…

We design and analyze VA-LUCB, a parameter-free algorithm, for identifying the best arm under the fixed-confidence setup and under a stringent constraint that the variance of the chosen arm is strictly smaller than a given threshold. An…

We study the best-arm identification problem with fixed confidence when contextual (covariate) information is available in stochastic bandits. Although we can use contextual information in each round, we are interested in the marginalized…

We propose a new strategy for best-arm identification with fixed confidence of Gaussian variables with bounded means and unit variance. This strategy, called Exploration-Biased Sampling, is not only asymptotically optimal: it is to the best…