English

Ranking and Selection as Stochastic Control

Machine Learning 2017-10-10 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

Under a Bayesian framework, we formulate the fully sequential sampling and selection decision in statistical ranking and selection as a stochastic control problem, and derive the associated Bellman equation. Using value function approximation, we derive an approximately optimal allocation policy. We show that this policy is not only computationally efficient but also possesses both one-step-ahead and asymptotic optimality for independent normal sampling distributions. Moreover, the proposed allocation policy is easily generalizable in the approximate dynamic programming paradigm.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.02619,
  title  = {Ranking and Selection as Stochastic Control},
  author = {Yijie Peng and Edwin K. P. Chong and Chun-Hung Chen and Michael C. Fu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.02619},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

15 pages, 8 figures, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:06:21.156Z