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We consider a variant of the classic multi-armed bandit problem where the expected reward of each arm is a function of an unknown parameter. The arms are divided into different groups, each of which has a common parameter. Therefore, when…
The multi-armed bandit problem is a core framework for sequential decision-making under uncertainty, but classical algorithms often fail in environments with hidden, time-varying states that confound reward estimation and optimal action…
This paper studies the problem of adaptively sampling from K distributions (arms) in order to identify the largest gap between any two adjacent means. We call this the MaxGap-bandit problem. This problem arises naturally in approximate…
Multi-player multi-armed bandit is an increasingly relevant decision-making problem, motivated by applications to cognitive radio systems. Most research for this problem focuses exclusively on the settings that players have \textit{full…
We study a finite-horizon restless multi-armed bandit problem with multiple actions, dubbed R(MA)^2B. The state of each arm evolves according to a controlled Markov decision process (MDP), and the reward of pulling an arm depends on both…
The fundamental problem of multiple secondary users contending for opportunistic spectrum access over multiple channels in cognitive radio networks has been formulated recently as a decentralized multi-armed bandit (D-MAB) problem. In a…
The stochastic multi-armed bandit problem is a well-known model for studying the exploration-exploitation trade-off. It has significant possible applications in adaptive clinical trials, which allow for dynamic changes in the treatment…
Multi-player Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) have been extensively studied in the literature, motivated by applications to Cognitive Radio systems. Driven by such applications as well, we motivate the introduction of several levels of feedback…
We study a structured multi-agent multi-armed bandit (MAMAB) problem in a dynamic environment. A graph reflects the information-sharing structure among agents, and the arms' reward distributions are piecewise-stationary with several unknown…
We introduce a novel framework of combinatorial multi-armed bandits (CMAB) with multivariant and probabilistically triggering arms (CMAB-MT), where the outcome of each arm is a $d$-dimensional multivariant random variable and the feedback…
We study best-arm identification with fixed confidence in bandit models with graph smoothness constraint. We provide and analyze an efficient gradient ascent algorithm to compute the sample complexity of this problem as a solution of a…
Large language models (LLMs) have been adopted to solve sequential decision-making tasks such as multi-armed bandits (MAB), in which an LLM is directly instructed to select the arms to pull in every iteration. However, this paradigm of…
Recommendation systems are a vital component of many online marketplaces, where there are often millions of items to potentially present to users who have a wide variety of wants or needs. Evaluating recommender system algorithms is a hard…
This paper introduces a general framework for risk-sensitive bandits that integrates the notions of risk-sensitive objectives by adopting a rich class of distortion riskmetrics. The introduced framework subsumes the various existing…
In the multiarmed bandit problem a gambler chooses an arm of a slot machine to pull considering a tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. We study the stochastic bandit problem where each arm has a reward distribution supported in a…
The objective of canonical multi-armed bandits is to identify and repeatedly select an arm with the largest reward, often in the form of the expected value of the arm's probability distribution. Such a utilitarian perspective and focus on…
We study the restless contextual multi-play multi-armed bandit (MP-MAB) problem for channel allocation in the opportunity spectrum access (OSA) scenario. Most existing MP-MAB methods are impractical for real-world OSA systems as they assume…
We study a problem of information gathering in a social network with dynamically available sources and time varying quality of information. We formulate this problem as a restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB). In this problem, information…
Sampling from distributions to find the one with the largest mean arises in a broad range of applications, and it can be mathematically modeled as a multi-armed bandit problem in which each distribution is associated with an arm. This paper…
We study the problem of off-policy evaluation in the multi-armed bandit model with bounded rewards, and develop minimax rate-optimal procedures under three settings. First, when the behavior policy is known, we show that the Switch…