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One of the key drivers of complexity in the classical (stochastic) multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is the difference between mean rewards in the top two arms, also known as the instance gap. The celebrated Upper Confidence Bound (UCB)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Anand Kalvit , Assaf Zeevi

Standard Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problems assume that the arms are independent. However, in many application scenarios, the information obtained by playing an arm provides information about the remainder of the arms. Hence, in such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-10-30 Onur Atan , Cem Tekin , Mihaela van der Schaar

We study the multi-player stochastic multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem in an abruptly changing environment. We consider a collision model in which a player receives reward at an arm if it is the only player to select the arm. We design two…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-12-14 Lai Wei , Vaibhav Srivastava

We consider a multi-armed bandit setting with finitely many arms, in which each arm yields an $M$-dimensional vector reward upon selection. We assume that the reward of each dimension (a.k.a. {\em objective}) is generated independently of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-24 Zhirui Chen , P. N. Karthik , Yeow Meng Chee , Vincent Y. F. Tan

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

In this paper, we introduce a multi-armed bandit problem termed max-min grouped bandits, in which the arms are arranged in possibly-overlapping groups, and the goal is to find the group whose worst arm has the highest mean reward. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-16 Zhenlin Wang , Jonathan Scarlett

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

In the classic Bayesian restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problem, there are $N$ arms, with rewards on all arms evolving at each time as Markov chains with known parameters. A player seeks to activate $K \geq 1$ arms at each time in order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2011-12-25 Wenhan Dai , Yi Gai , Bhaskar Krishnamachari , Qing Zhao

For a wireless avionics communication system, a Multi-arm bandit game is mathematically formulated, which includes channel states, strategies, and rewards. The simple case includes only two agents sharing the spectrum which is fully studied…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2017-11-15 Jingyang Lu , Lun Li , Dan Shen , Genshe Chen , Bin Jia , Erik Blasch , Khanh Pham

We examine a multi-armed bandit problem with contextual information, where the objective is to ensure that each arm receives a minimum aggregated reward across contexts while simultaneously maximizing the total cumulative reward. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-15 Ahmed Ben Yahmed , Hafedh El Ferchichi , Marc Abeille , Vianney Perchet

In several applications such as clinical trials and financial portfolio optimization, the expected value (or the average reward) does not satisfactorily capture the merits of a drug or a portfolio. In such applications, risk plays a crucial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-13 Vincent Y. F. Tan , Prashanth L. A. , Krishna Jagannathan

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

In this paper, we consider a risk-averse multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem where the goal is to learn a policy that minimizes the risk of low expected return, as opposed to maximizing the expected return itself, which is the objective in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-12 Yi Shen , Jessilyn Dunn , Michael M. Zavlanos

In bandit best-arm identification, an algorithm is tasked with finding the arm with highest mean reward with a specified accuracy as fast as possible. We study multi-fidelity best-arm identification, in which the algorithm can choose to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Riccardo Poiani , Rémy Degenne , Emilie Kaufmann , Alberto Maria Metelli , Marcello Restelli

We study the stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem with random delays in the feedback received by the algorithm. We consider two settings: the reward-dependent delay setting, where realized delays may depend on the stochastic rewards,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-07 Tal Lancewicki , Shahar Segal , Tomer Koren , Yishay Mansour

We analytically derive a class of optimal solutions to a linear program (LP) for automated mechanism design that satisfies efficiency, incentive compatibility, strong budget balance (SBB), and individual rationality (IR), where SBB and IR…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Takayuki Osogami , Hirota Kinoshita , Segev Wasserkrug

In this paper, we consider a novel variant of the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, MAB with cost subsidy, which models many real-life applications where the learning agent has to pay to select an arm and is concerned about optimizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-16 Deeksha Sinha , Karthik Abinav Sankararama , Abbas Kazerouni , Vashist Avadhanula

We study the Improving Multi-Armed Bandit (IMAB) problem, where the reward obtained from an arm increases with the number of pulls it receives. This model provides an elegant abstraction for many real-world problems in domains such as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-22 Vishakha Patil , Vineet Nair , Ganesh Ghalme , Arindam Khan

Multi-objective multi-armed bandit (MO-MAB) problems traditionally aim to achieve Pareto optimality. However, real-world scenarios often involve users with varying preferences across objectives, resulting in a Pareto-optimal arm that may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Linfeng Cao , Ming Shi , Ness B. Shroff

We study fairness within the stochastic, \emph{multi-armed bandit} (MAB) decision making framework. We adapt the fairness framework of "treating similar individuals similarly" to this setting. Here, an `individual' corresponds to an arm and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-07 Yang Liu , Goran Radanovic , Christos Dimitrakakis , Debmalya Mandal , David C. Parkes