2015 COLT COLT 2015

Batched Bandit Problems

Abstract

Motivated by practical applications, chiefly clinical trials, we study the regret achievable for stochastic multi-armed bandits under the constraint that the employed policy must split trials into a small number of batches. Our results show that a very small number of batches gives already close to minimax optimal regret bounds and we also evaluate the number of trials in each batch. As a byproduct, we derive optimal policies with low switching cost for stochastic bandits.

🌉 Interdisciplinary Bridge — Machine Learning and Mathematics & Optimization
🧭 Keyword Pioneer — batched learning
🐣 Hot Topic Early Bird — clinical trial
🐝 Cross-Pollinator — Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Computer Vision, Data Science & Analytics, Deep Learning, Healthcare & Medicine, Interdisciplinary, Knowledge & Reasoning, Machine Learning, Mathematics & Optimization, Natural Language Processing, Reinforcement Learning, Robotics, Security & Privacy, Speech & Audio