Pure Exploration for Constrained Best Mixed Arm Identification with a Fixed Budget

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Tang, Dengwang, Jain, Rahul, Nayyar, Ashutosh, Nuzzo, Pierluigi
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Tang, Dengwang
Jain, Rahul
Nayyar, Ashutosh
Nuzzo, Pierluigi
author_facet Tang, Dengwang
Jain, Rahul
Nayyar, Ashutosh
Nuzzo, Pierluigi
contents In this paper, we introduce the constrained best mixed arm identification (CBMAI) problem with a fixed budget. This is a pure exploration problem in a stochastic finite armed bandit model. Each arm is associated with a reward and multiple types of costs from unknown distributions. Unlike the unconstrained best arm identification problem, the optimal solution for the CBMAI problem may be a randomized mixture of multiple arms. The goal thus is to find the best mixed arm that maximizes the expected reward subject to constraints on the expected costs with a given learning budget $N$. We propose a novel, parameter-free algorithm, called the Score Function-based Successive Reject (SFSR) algorithm, that combines the classical successive reject framework with a novel score-function-based rejection criteria based on linear programming theory to identify the optimal support. We provide a theoretical upper bound on the mis-identification (of the the support of the best mixed arm) probability and show that it decays exponentially in the budget $N$ and some constants that characterize the hardness of the problem instance. We also develop an information theoretic lower bound on the error probability that shows that these constants appropriately characterize the problem difficulty. We validate this empirically on a number of average and hard instances.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_15090
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Pure Exploration for Constrained Best Mixed Arm Identification with a Fixed Budget
Tang, Dengwang
Jain, Rahul
Nayyar, Ashutosh
Nuzzo, Pierluigi
Machine Learning
In this paper, we introduce the constrained best mixed arm identification (CBMAI) problem with a fixed budget. This is a pure exploration problem in a stochastic finite armed bandit model. Each arm is associated with a reward and multiple types of costs from unknown distributions. Unlike the unconstrained best arm identification problem, the optimal solution for the CBMAI problem may be a randomized mixture of multiple arms. The goal thus is to find the best mixed arm that maximizes the expected reward subject to constraints on the expected costs with a given learning budget $N$. We propose a novel, parameter-free algorithm, called the Score Function-based Successive Reject (SFSR) algorithm, that combines the classical successive reject framework with a novel score-function-based rejection criteria based on linear programming theory to identify the optimal support. We provide a theoretical upper bound on the mis-identification (of the the support of the best mixed arm) probability and show that it decays exponentially in the budget $N$ and some constants that characterize the hardness of the problem instance. We also develop an information theoretic lower bound on the error probability that shows that these constants appropriately characterize the problem difficulty. We validate this empirically on a number of average and hard instances.
title Pure Exploration for Constrained Best Mixed Arm Identification with a Fixed Budget
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15090