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Related papers: Bandit Problems with Side Observations

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Learning paradigms based purely on offline data as well as those based solely on sequential online learning have been well-studied in the literature. In this paper, we consider combining offline data with online learning, an area less…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-16 Shubhada Agrawal , Sandeep Juneja , Karthikeyan Shanmugam , Arun Sai Suggala

We consider a budget-constrained bandit problem where each arm pull incurs a random cost, and yields a random reward in return. The objective is to maximize the total expected reward under a budget constraint on the total cost. The model is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-03 Semih Cayci , Atilla Eryilmaz , R. Srikant

In this paper we present a model for the hidden Markovian bandit problem with linear rewards. As opposed to current work on Markovian bandits, we do not assume that the state is known to the decision maker before making the decision.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-25 Michal Yemini , Amir Leshem , Anelia Somekh-Baruch

Mode estimation is a classical problem in statistics with a wide range of applications in machine learning. Despite this, there is little understanding in its robustness properties under possibly adversarial data contamination. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-09 Aldo Pacchiano , Heinrich Jiang , Michael I. Jordan

The Multi-Armed Bandit problem provides a fundamental framework for analyzing the tension between exploration and exploitation in sequential learning. This paper explores Information Directed Sampling (IDS) policies, a class of heuristics…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-24 Annika Hirling , Giorgio Nicoletti , Antonio Celani

Pure exploration in multi-armed bandits has emerged as an important framework for modeling decision-making and search under uncertainty. In modern applications, however, one is often faced with a tremendously large number of options. Even…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Parth K. Thaker , Mohit Malu , Nikhil Rao , Gautam Dasarathy

Bandit algorithms solve diverse sequential decision-making problems, but are often too sample-inefficient for from-scratch personalization. To substantially reduce exploration times, latent bandit algorithms exploit cross-instance structure…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Emil Carlsson , Newton Mwai , Fredrik D. Johansson

Causal knowledge can be used to support decision-making problems. This has been recognized in the causal bandits literature, where a causal (multi-armed) bandit is characterized by a causal graphical model and a target variable. The arms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Francisco N. F. Q. Simoes , Itai Feigenbaum , Mehdi Dastani , Thijs van Ommen

In multi-objective decision-making with hierarchical preferences, lexicographic bandits provide a natural framework for optimizing multiple objectives in a prioritized order. In this setting, a learner repeatedly selects arms and observes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Bo Xue , Yuanyu Wan , Zhichao Lu , Qingfu Zhang

We consider a continuous-time multi-arm bandit problem (CTMAB), where the learner can sample arms any number of times in a given interval and obtain a random reward from each sample, however, increasing the frequency of sampling incurs an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-20 Rahul Vaze , Manjesh K. Hanawal

Over the past few years, the multi-armed bandit model has become increasingly popular in the machine learning community, partly because of applications including online content optimization. This paper reviews two different sequential…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-11-08 Emilie Kaufmann , Aurélien Garivier

We consider a variant of the contextual bandit problem. In standard contextual bandits, when a user arrives we get the user's complete feature vector and then assign a treatment (arm) to that user. In a number of applications (like…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Sanath Kumar Krishnamurthy , Susan Athey

In this work, we investigate the problem of adapting to the presence or absence of causal structure in multi-armed bandit problems. In addition to the usual reward signal, we assume the learner has access to additional variables, observed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-02 Ziyi Liu , Idan Attias , Daniel M. Roy

This paper studies the adversarial graphical contextual bandits, a variant of adversarial multi-armed bandits that leverage two categories of the most common side information: \emph{contexts} and \emph{side observations}. In this setting, a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-18 Lingda Wang , Bingcong Li , Huozhi Zhou , Georgios B. Giannakis , Lav R. Varshney , Zhizhen Zhao

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

Most bandit policies are designed to either minimize regret in any problem instance, making very few assumptions about the underlying environment, or in a Bayesian sense, assuming a prior distribution over environment parameters. The former…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-07 Branislav Kveton , Martin Mladenov , Chih-Wei Hsu , Manzil Zaheer , Csaba Szepesvari , Craig Boutilier

We consider stochastic multi-armed bandit problems with complex actions over a set of basic arms, where the decision maker plays a complex action rather than a basic arm in each round. The reward of the complex action is some function of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-11-05 Aditya Gopalan , Shie Mannor , Yishay Mansour

We study the problem of online learning in adversarial bandit problems under a partial observability model called off-policy feedback. In this sequential decision making problem, the learner cannot directly observe its rewards, but instead…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-20 Germano Gabbianelli , Matteo Papini , Gergely Neu

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-08 Rianne de Heide , James Cheshire , Pierre Ménard , Alexandra Carpentier

We consider the classic online learning and stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems, when at each step, the online policy can probe and find out which of a small number ($k$) of choices has better reward (or loss) before making its…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-11-08 Aditya Bhaskara , Sreenivas Gollapudi , Sungjin Im , Kostas Kollias , Kamesh Munagala