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We present an algorithm, "constrained successive accept or reject (CSAR)," for the problem of identifying the subset of top feasible-arms from a given finite set of arms with the limited sampling-budget equal to a given time-horizon when…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-22 Hyeong Soo Chang

We consider the fixed-confidence best arm identification (FC-BAI) problem in the Bayesian setting. This problem aims to find the arm of the largest mean with a fixed confidence level when the bandit model has been sampled from the known…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-25 Kyoungseok Jang , Junpei Komiyama , Kazutoshi Yamazaki

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

We consider the fixed-budget best arm identification problem with rewards following normal distributions. In this problem, the forecaster is given $K$ arms (or treatments) and $T$ time steps. The forecaster attempts to find the arm with the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-04-16 Junpei Komiyama

We study the best-arm identification problem in multi-armed bandits with stochastic, potentially private rewards, when the goal is to identify the arm with the highest quantile at a fixed, prescribed level. First, we propose a (non-private)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-12-06 Kontantinos E. Nikolakakis , Dionysios S. Kalogerias , Or Sheffet , Anand D. Sarwate

We address the M-best-arm identification problem in multi-armed bandits. A player has a limited budget to explore K arms (M<K), and once pulled, each arm yields a reward drawn (independently) from a fixed, unknown distribution. The goal is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-07-11 Shahin Shahrampour , Vahid Tarokh

Simple regret is a natural and parameter-free performance criterion for pure exploration in multi-armed bandits yet is less popular than the probability of missing the best arm or an $\epsilon$-good arm, perhaps due to lack of easy ways to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-03 Yao Zhao , Connor James Stephens , Csaba Szepesvári , Kwang-Sung Jun

We consider the problem of best arm identification in the multi-armed bandit model, under fixed confidence. Given a confidence input $\delta$, the goal is to identify the arm with the highest mean reward with a probability of at least 1 --…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-12-21 El Mehdi Saad , Gilles Blanchard , Nicolas Verzelen

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

This work investigates the problem of best arm identification for multi-agent multi-armed bandits. We consider $N$ agents grouped into $M$ clusters, where each cluster solves a stochastic bandit problem. The mapping between agents and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-16 Yash , Nikhil Karamchandani , Avishek Ghosh

The expected improvement (EI) algorithm is a popular strategy for information collection in optimization under uncertainty. The algorithm is widely known to be too greedy, but nevertheless enjoys wide use due to its simplicity and ability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-30 Chao Qin , Diego Klabjan , Daniel Russo

We study the robust best-arm identification problem (RBAI) in the case of linear rewards. The primary objective is to identify a near-optimal robust arm, which involves selecting arms at every round and assessing their robustness by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-09 Wei Wang , Sattar Vakili , Ilija Bogunovic

In fixed budget bandit identification, an algorithm sequentially observes samples from several distributions up to a given final time. It then answers a query about the set of distributions. A good algorithm will have a small probability of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-07-03 Rémy Degenne

We study $(\epsilon, \delta)$-PAC best arm identification, where a decision-maker must identify an $\epsilon$-optimal arm with probability at least $1 - \delta$, while minimizing the number of arm pulls (samples). Most of the work on this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-09 Brijen Thananjeyan , Kirthevasan Kandasamy , Ion Stoica , Michael I. Jordan , Ken Goldberg , Joseph E. Gonzalez

We consider the problem of identifying the best arm in stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits (MABs) using a fixed sampling budget. Characterizing the minimal instance-specific error probability for this problem constitutes one of the important…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-21 Po-An Wang , Ruo-Chun Tzeng , Alexandre Proutiere

In the Best-$K$ identification problem (Best-$K$-Arm), we are given $N$ stochastic bandit arms with unknown reward distributions. Our goal is to identify the $K$ arms with the largest means with high confidence, by drawing samples from the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-22 Haotian Jiang , Jian Li , Mingda Qiao

This study investigates minimax and Bayes optimal strategies for fixed-budget best-arm identification. We consider an adaptive procedure consisting of a sampling phase followed by a recommendation phase, and we design an adaptive experiment…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-02-05 Masahiro Kato

We study the best arm identification (BEST-1-ARM) problem, which is defined as follows. We are given $n$ stochastic bandit arms. The $i$th arm has a reward distribution $D_i$ with an unknown mean $\mu_{i}$. Upon each play of the $i$th arm,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-24 Lijie Chen , Jian Li

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

We consider a variant of the best arm identification (BAI) problem in multi-armed bandits (MAB) in which there are two sets of arms (source and target), and the objective is to determine the best target arm while only pulling source arms.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-09 Ojash Neopane , Aaditya Ramdas , Aarti Singh