Title
Stochastic bandits with side observations on networks
Abstract
We study the stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in the presence of side-observations across actions. In our model, choosing an action provides additional side observations for a subset of the remaining actions. One example of this model occurs in the problem of targeting users in online social networks where users respond to their friends's activity, thus providing information about each other's preferences. Our contributions are as follows: 1) We derive an asymptotic (with respect to time) lower bound (as a function of the network structure) on the regret (loss) of any uniformly good policy that achieves the maximum long term average reward. 2) We propose two policies - a randomized policy and a policy based on the well-known upper confidence bound (UCB) policies, both of which explore each action at a rate that is a function of its network position. We show that these policies achieve the asymptotic lower bound on the regret up to a multiplicative factor independent of network structure. The upper bound guarantees on the regret of these policies are better than those of existing policies. Finally, we use numerical examples on a real-world social network to demonstrate the significant benefits obtained by our policies against other existing policies.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2591971.2591989
SIGMETRICS
Keywords
Field
DocType
miscellaneous,multiarmed bandits,side observations,social networks
Mathematical economics,Social network,Regret,Multiplicative function,Computer science,Upper and lower bounds,Network structure
Conference
Volume
Issue
ISSN
42
1
0163-5999
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
17
0.76
14
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Swapna1454.94
Atilla Eryilmaz299284.52
N. B. Shroff36994519.23