Abstract
We consider a multi-armed bandit problem in a setting where each arm produces a noisy reward realization which depends on an observable random covariate. As opposed to the traditional static multi-armed bandit problem, this setting allows for dynamically changing rewards that better describe applications where side information is available. We adopt a nonparametric model where the expected rewards are smooth functions of the covariate and where the hardness of the problem is captured by a margin parameter. To maximize the expected cumulative reward, we introduce a policy called Adaptively Binned Successive Elimination (ABSE) that adaptively decomposes the global problem into suitably “localized” static bandit problems. This policy constructs an adaptive partition using a variant of the Successive Elimination (SE) policy. Our results include sharper regret bounds for the SE policy in a static bandit problem and minimax optimal regret bounds for the ABSE policy in the dynamic problem.
Citation
Vianney Perchet. Philippe Rigollet. "The multi-armed bandit problem with covariates." Ann. Statist. 41 (2) 693 - 721, April 2013. https://doi.org/10.1214/13-AOS1101
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