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Related papers: Bandit Allocational Instability

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This paper considers a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in which multiple mobile agents receive rewards by sampling from a collection of spatially dispersed stochastic processes, called bandits. The goal is to formulate a decentralized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-01 Pathmanathan Pankayaraj , D. H. S. Maithripala , J. M. Berg

We study the distribution of regret in stochastic multi-armed bandits and episodic reinforcement learning through a unified framework. We formalize a distributional regret bound as a probabilistic guarantee that holds uniformly over all…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Harin Lee , Min-hwan Oh

We study the multi-armed bandit problem where the rewards are realizations of general non-stationary stochastic processes, a setting that generalizes many existing lines of work and analyses. In particular, we present a theoretical analysis…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-09-04 Corinna Cortes , Giulia DeSalvo , Vitaly Kuznetsov , Mehryar Mohri , Scott Yang

In the classic multi-armed bandits problem, the goal is to have a policy for dynamically operating arms that each yield stochastic rewards with unknown means. The key metric of interest is regret, defined as the gap between the expected…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2010-11-23 Yi Gai , Bhaskar Krishnamachari , Rahul Jain

We study the optimal trade-off between expectation and tail risk for regret distribution in the stochastic multi-armed bandit model. We fully characterize the interplay among three desired properties for policy design: worst-case…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-27 David Simchi-Levi , Zeyu Zheng , Feng Zhu

Experimentation with interference poses a significant challenge in contemporary online platforms. Prior research on experimentation with interference has concentrated on the final output of a policy. The cumulative performance, while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-17 Su Jia , Peter Frazier , Nathan Kallus

In several applications of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, the traditional objective of maximizing the expected total reward can be inappropriate. In this paper, motivated by certain operational concerns in online platforms, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-16 Eren Ozbay , Vijay Kamble

Classic no-regret multi-armed bandit algorithms, including the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB), Hedge, and EXP3, are inherently unfair by design. Their unfairness stems from their objective of playing the most rewarding arm as frequently as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-14 Abhishek Sinha

We consider the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem, where an agent sequentially chooses actions and observes rewards for the actions it took. While the majority of algorithms try to minimize the regret, i.e., the cumulative difference between…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-14 Nadav Merlis , Shie Mannor

We investigate the problem of maximizing social welfare while ensuring fairness in a multi-agent multi-armed bandit (MA-MAB) setting. In this problem, a centralized decision-maker takes actions over time, generating random rewards for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Piyushi Manupriya , Himanshu , SakethaNath Jagarlapudi , Ganesh Ghalme

While classical formulations of multi-armed bandit problems assume that each arm's reward is independent and stationary, real-world applications often involve non-stationary environments and interdependencies between arms. In particular,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Ryoma Sato , Shinji Ito

We study the stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem under worst-case regret and heavy-tailed reward distribution. We modify the minimax policy MOSS for the sub-Gaussian reward distribution by using saturated empirical mean to design a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-11-19 Lai Wei , Vaibhav Srivastava

This paper investigates stochastic multi-armed bandit algorithms that are robust to adversarial attacks, where an attacker can first observe the learner's action and {then} alter their reward observation. We study two cases of this model,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-19 Xuchuang Wang , Jinhang Zuo , Xutong Liu , John C. S. Lui , Mohammad Hajiesmaili

Sharpe Ratio (SR) is a critical parameter in characterizing financial time series as it jointly considers the reward and the volatility of any stock/portfolio through its variance. Deriving online algorithms for optimizing the SR is…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2024-06-12 Sabrina Khurshid , Mohammed Shahid Abdulla , Gourab Ghatak

Given a multi-armed bandit problem it may be desirable to achieve a smaller-than-usual worst-case regret for some special actions. I show that the price for such unbalanced worst-case regret guarantees is rather high. Specifically, if an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-03 Tor Lattimore

We study the constrained variant of the \emph{multi-armed bandit} (MAB) problem, in which the learner aims not only at minimizing the total loss incurred during the learning dynamic, but also at controlling the violation of multiple…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Francesco Emanuele Stradi , Kalana Kalupahana , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We consider a continuous-time multi-arm bandit problem (CTMAB), where the learner can sample arms any number of times in a given interval and obtain a random reward from each sample, however, increasing the frequency of sampling incurs an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-20 Rahul Vaze , Manjesh K. Hanawal

This paper is in the field of stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits (MABs), i.e., those sequential selection techniques able to learn online using only the feedback given by the chosen option (a.k.a. arm). We study a particular case of the rested…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-08 Alberto Maria Metelli , Francesco Trovò , Matteo Pirola , Marcello Restelli

We present differentially private algorithms for the stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem. This is a problem for applications such as adaptive clinical trials, experiment design, and user-targeted advertising where private…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-11-30 Aristide Tossou , Christos Dimitrakakis

We study Pareto optimality in multi-objective multi-armed bandit by providing a formulation of adversarial multi-objective multi-armed bandit and defining its Pareto regrets that can be applied to both stochastic and adversarial settings.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-01 Mengfan Xu , Diego Klabjan