Cost Aware Best Arm Identification

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Kanarios, Kellen, Zhang, Qining, Ying, Lei
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Kanarios, Kellen
Zhang, Qining
Ying, Lei
author_facet Kanarios, Kellen
Zhang, Qining
Ying, Lei
contents In this paper, we study a best arm identification problem with dual objects. In addition to the classic reward, each arm is associated with a cost distribution and the goal is to identify the largest reward arm using the minimum expected cost. We call it \emph{Cost Aware Best Arm Identification} (CABAI), which captures the separation of testing and implementation phases in product development pipelines and models the objective shift between phases, i.e., cost for testing and reward for implementation. We first derive a theoretical lower bound for CABAI and propose an algorithm called $\mathsf{CTAS}$ to match it asymptotically. To reduce the computation of $\mathsf{CTAS}$, we further propose a simple algorithm called \emph{Chernoff Overlap} (CO), based on a square-root rule, which we prove is optimal in simplified two-armed models and generalizes well in numerical experiments. Our results show that (i) ignoring the heterogeneous action cost results in sub-optimality in practice, and (ii) simple algorithms can deliver near-optimal performance over a wide range of problems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_16710
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cost Aware Best Arm Identification
Kanarios, Kellen
Zhang, Qining
Ying, Lei
Machine Learning
In this paper, we study a best arm identification problem with dual objects. In addition to the classic reward, each arm is associated with a cost distribution and the goal is to identify the largest reward arm using the minimum expected cost. We call it \emph{Cost Aware Best Arm Identification} (CABAI), which captures the separation of testing and implementation phases in product development pipelines and models the objective shift between phases, i.e., cost for testing and reward for implementation. We first derive a theoretical lower bound for CABAI and propose an algorithm called $\mathsf{CTAS}$ to match it asymptotically. To reduce the computation of $\mathsf{CTAS}$, we further propose a simple algorithm called \emph{Chernoff Overlap} (CO), based on a square-root rule, which we prove is optimal in simplified two-armed models and generalizes well in numerical experiments. Our results show that (i) ignoring the heterogeneous action cost results in sub-optimality in practice, and (ii) simple algorithms can deliver near-optimal performance over a wide range of problems.
title Cost Aware Best Arm Identification
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16710