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Related papers: Bandit Problems with Side Observations

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This paper presents an efficient algorithm to solve the sleeping bandit with multiple plays problem in the context of an online recommendation system. The problem involves bounded, adversarial loss and unknown i.i.d. distributions for arm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-28 Jianjun Yuan , Wei Lee Woon , Ludovik Coba

We consider the classical stochastic multi-armed bandit but where, from time to time and roughly with frequency $\epsilon$, an extra observation is gathered by the agent for free. We prove that, no matter how small $\epsilon$ is the agent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-11 Rémy Degenne , Evrard Garcelon , Vianney Perchet

We consider a novel stochastic multi-armed bandit setting, where playing an arm makes it unavailable for a fixed number of time slots thereafter. This models situations where reusing an arm too often is undesirable (e.g. making the same…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-31 Soumya Basu , Rajat Sen , Sujay Sanghavi , Sanjay Shakkottai

We study the Stochastic Multi-armed Bandit problem under bounded arm-memory. In this setting, the arms arrive in a stream, and the number of arms that can be stored in the memory at any time, is bounded. The decision-maker can only pull…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-10 Arnab Maiti , Vishakha Patil , Arindam Khan

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 bandit best-arm identification with arbitrary and potentially adversarial rewards. A simple random uniform learner obtains the optimal rate of error in the adversarial scenario. However, this type of strategy is suboptimal when the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-17 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Peter L. Bartlett , Victor Gabillon , Alan Malek , Michal Valko

Recommender systems are a ubiquitous feature of online platforms. Increasingly, they are explicitly tasked with increasing users' long-term satisfaction. In this context, we study a content exploration task, which we formalize as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-21 Thomas M. McDonald , Lucas Maystre , Mounia Lalmas , Daniel Russo , Kamil Ciosek

To address the contextual bandit problem, we propose an online random forest algorithm. The analysis of the proposed algorithm is based on the sample complexity needed to find the optimal decision stump. Then, the decision stumps are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-09-16 Raphaël Féraud , Robin Allesiardo , Tanguy Urvoy , Fabrice Clérot

We consider the stochastic contextual bandit problem with additional regularization. The motivation comes from problems where the policy of the agent must be close to some baseline policy which is known to perform well on the task. To…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-06 Xavier Fontaine , Quentin Berthet , Vianney Perchet

We study the linear bandit problem that accounts for partially observable features. Without proper handling, unobserved features can lead to linear regret in the decision horizon $T$, as their influence on rewards is unknown. To tackle this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-19 Wonyoung Kim , Sungwoo Park , Garud Iyengar , Assaf Zeevi , Min-hwan Oh

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 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…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-01-22 Varun Mehta , Rahul Meshram , Kesav Kaza , S. N. Merchant

We consider a variant of the multi-armed bandit model, which we call multi-armed bandit problem with known trend, where the gambler knows the shape of the reward function of each arm but not its distribution. This new problem is motivated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-15 Djallel Bouneffouf , Raphaël Feraud

Bandits with covariates, a.k.a. contextual bandits, address situations where optimal actions (or arms) at a given time $t$, depend on a context $x_t$, e.g., a new patient's medical history, a consumer's past purchases. While it is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-23 Joseph Suk , Samory Kpotufe

We consider the best-arm identification problem in multi-armed bandits, which focuses purely on exploration. A player is given a fixed budget to explore a finite set of arms, and the rewards of each arm are drawn independently from a fixed,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-08-02 Shahin Shahrampour , Mohammad Noshad , Vahid Tarokh

A stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with side information on the similarity and dissimilarity across different arms is considered. The action space of the problem can be represented by a unit interval graph (UIG) where each node…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-04 Xiao Xu , Sattar Vakili , Qing Zhao , Ananthram Swami

Contextual bandits are online learners that, given an input, select an arm and receive a reward for that arm. They use the reward as a learning signal and aim to maximize the total reward over the inputs. Contextual bandits are commonly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-14 Awni Hannun , Brian Knott , Shubho Sengupta , Laurens van der Maaten

We study the problem of online learning in two-sided non-stationary matching markets, where the objective is to converge to a stable match. In particular, we consider the setting where one side of the market, the arms, has fixed known set…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-16 Deepan Muthirayan , Chinmay Maheshwari , Pramod P. Khargonekar , Shankar Sastry

We study the problem of Gaussian bandits with general side information, as first introduced by Wu, Szepesvari, and Gyorgy. In this setting, the play of an arm reveals information about other arms, according to an arbitrary a priori known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-19 Alexia Atsidakou , Orestis Papadigenopoulos , Constantine Caramanis , Sujay Sanghavi , Sanjay Shakkottai

The best arm identification problem in the multi-armed bandit setting is an excellent model of many real-world decision-making problems, yet it fails to capture the fact that in the real-world, safety constraints often must be met while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-25 Zhenlin Wang , Andrew Wagenmaker , Kevin Jamieson