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Contextual bandits can solve a huge range of real-world problems. However, current popular algorithms to solve them either rely on linear models, or unreliable uncertainty estimation in non-linear models, which are required to deal with the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-01 Adam Elwood , Marco Leonardi , Ashraf Mohamed , Alessandro Rozza

In this paper, we propose a novel perturbation-based exploration method in bandit algorithms with bounded or unbounded rewards, called residual bootstrap exploration (\texttt{ReBoot}). The \texttt{ReBoot} enforces exploration by injecting…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-02-21 Chi-Hua Wang , Yang Yu , Botao Hao , Guang Cheng

Efficient selection among multiple generative models is increasingly important in modern generative AI, where sampling from suboptimal models is costly. This problem can be formulated as a multi-armed bandit task. Under diversity-aware…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Bahar Dibaei Nia , Farzan Farnia

We propose a new framework for contextual multi-armed bandits based on tree ensembles. Our framework adapts two widely used bandit methods, Upper Confidence Bound and Thompson Sampling, for both standard and combinatorial settings. As part…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Hannes Nilsson , Rikard Johansson , Niklas Åkerblom , Morteza Haghir Chehreghani

In retail, there are predictable yet dramatic time-dependent patterns in customer behavior, such as periodic changes in the number of visitors, or increases in customers just before major holidays. The current paradigm of multi-armed bandit…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-16 Stefano Tracà , Cynthia Rudin , Weiyu Yan

Psychological research shows that enjoyment of many goods is subject to satiation, with short-term satisfaction declining after repeated exposures to the same item. Nevertheless, proposed algorithms for powering recommender systems seldom…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Liu Leqi , Fatma Kilinc-Karzan , Zachary C. Lipton , Alan L. Montgomery

In this paper, we study utilizing neural networks for the exploitation and exploration of contextual multi-armed bandits. Contextual multi-armed bandits have been studied for decades with various applications. To solve the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Yikun Ban , Yuchen Yan , Arindam Banerjee , Jingrui He

We study incentivized exploration for the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem where the players receive compensation for exploring arms other than the greedy choice and may provide biased feedback on reward. We seek to understand the impact of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-17 Zhiyuan Liu , Huazheng Wang , Fan Shen , Kai Liu , Lijun Chen

Bandit learning algorithms typically involve the balance of exploration and exploitation. However, in many practical applications, worst-case scenarios needing systematic exploration are seldom encountered. In this work, we consider a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-27 Vidyashankar Sivakumar , Zhiwei Steven Wu , Arindam Banerjee

The multi-armed bandit(MAB) is a classical sequential decision problem. Most work requires assumptions about the reward distribution (e.g., bounded), while practitioners may have difficulty obtaining information about these distributions to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-14 Han Qi , Fei Guo , Li Zhu

Motivated by the challenges of edge inference, we study a variant of the cascade bandit model in which each arm corresponds to an inference model with an associated accuracy and error probability. We analyse four decision-making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-30 R Sri Prakash , Nikhil Karamchandani , Sharayu Moharir

In linear contextual bandits, the objective is to select actions that maximize cumulative rewards, modeled as a linear function with unknown parameters. Although Thompson Sampling performs well empirically, it does not achieve optimal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-18 Wonyoung Kim

Much of the recent literature on bandit learning focuses on algorithms that aim to converge on an optimal action. One shortcoming is that this orientation does not account for time sensitivity, which can play a crucial role when learning an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-09 Daniel Russo , Benjamin Van Roy

Thompson sampling is an efficient algorithm for sequential decision making, which exploits the posterior uncertainty to address the exploration-exploitation dilemma. There has been significant recent interest in integrating Bayesian neural…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-08-07 Zhendong Wang , Mingyuan Zhou

Thompson sampling, a Bayesian method for balancing exploration and exploitation in bandit problems, has theoretical guarantees and exhibits strong empirical performance in many domains. Traditional Thompson sampling, however, assumes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-04 Andrew Stirn , Tony Jebara

In the incentivized exploration model, a principal aims to explore and learn over time by interacting with a sequence of self-interested agents. It has been recently understood that the main challenge in designing incentive-compatible…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Benjamin Schiffer , Mark Sellke

Ensuring sufficient exploration is a central challenge when training meta-reinforcement learning (meta-RL) agents to solve novel environments. Conventional solutions to the exploration-exploitation dilemma inject explicit incentives such as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Micah Rentschler , Jesse Roberts

Recent work on exploration in reinforcement learning (RL) has led to a series of increasingly complex solutions to the problem. This increase in complexity often comes at the expense of generality. Recent empirical studies suggest that,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-03 Will Dabney , Georg Ostrovski , André Barreto

Originally motivated by default risk management applications, this paper investigates a novel problem, referred to as the profitable bandit problem here. At each step, an agent chooses a subset of the K possible actions. For each action…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-05-09 Mastane Achab , Stephan Clémençon , Aurélien Garivier

We address the problem of regret minimization in logistic contextual bandits, where a learner decides among sequential actions or arms given their respective contexts to maximize binary rewards. Using a fast inference procedure with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-05-22 Bianca Dumitrascu , Karen Feng , Barbara E Engelhardt