Related papers: Learning with a Budget: Identifying the Best Arm w…
We study the best-arm identification problem in linear bandit, where the rewards of the arms depend linearly on an unknown parameter $\theta^*$ and the objective is to return the arm with the largest reward. We characterize the complexity…
We investigate top-$m$ arm identification, a basic problem in bandit theory, in a multi-agent learning model in which agents collaborate to learn an objective function. We are interested in designing collaborative learning algorithms that…
Real-time status updating applications increasingly rely on networks of devices and edge nodes to maintain data freshness, as quantified by the age of information (AoI) metric. Given that edge computing nodes exhibit uncertain and…
We address the problem of finding the maximizer of a nonlinear smooth function, that can only be evaluated point-wise, subject to constraints on the number of permitted function evaluations. This problem is also known as fixed-budget best…
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…
We consider a bandit problem where at any time, the decision maker can add new arms to her consideration set. A new arm is queried at a cost from an "arm-reservoir" containing finitely many "arm-types," each characterized by a distinct mean…
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 consider a stochastic bandit problem with a possibly infinite number of arms. We write $p^*$ for the proportion of optimal arms and $\Delta$ for the minimal mean-gap between optimal and sub-optimal arms. We characterize the optimal…
We study the initial beam acquisition problem in millimeter wave (mm-wave) networks from the perspective of best arm identification in multi-armed bandits (MABs). For the stationary environment, we propose a novel algorithm called…
A central problem in business concerns the optimal allocation of limited resources to a set of available tasks, where the payoff of these tasks is inherently uncertain. In credit card fraud detection, for instance, a bank can only assign a…
This paper formulates a new Best-Arm Identification problem in the non-stationary stochastic bandits setting, where the means of all arms are shifted in the same way due to a global influence of the environment. The aim is to identify the…
We consider a sequential decision-making problem where an agent can take one action at a time and each action has a stochastic temporal extent, i.e., a new action cannot be taken until the previous one is finished. Upon completion, the…
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…
This paper investigates a hitherto unaddressed aspect of best arm identification (BAI) in stochastic multi-armed bandits in the fixed-confidence setting. Two key metrics for assessing bandit algorithms are computational efficiency and…
We study the problem of best-arm identification in a distributed variant of the multi-armed bandit setting, with a central learner and multiple agents. Each agent is associated with an arm of the bandit, generating stochastic rewards…
We consider the combinatorial bandits problem with semi-bandit feedback under finite sampling budget constraints, in which the learner can carry out its action only for a limited number of times specified by an overall budget. The action is…
We consider the classical problem of sequential resource allocation where a decision maker must repeatedly divide a budget between several resources, each with diminishing returns. This can be recast as a specific stochastic optimization…
Recommendation systems when employed in markets play a dual role: they assist users in selecting their most desired items from a large pool and they help in allocating a limited number of items to the users who desire them the most. Despite…
In this paper, we study the tradeoffs between the time and the number of communication rounds of the best arm identification problem in the heterogeneous collaborative learning model, where multiple agents interact with possibly different…
We study the problem of finding the most mutually correlated arms among many arms. We show that adaptive arms sampling strategies can have significant advantages over the non-adaptive uniform sampling strategy. Our proposed algorithms rely…