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arXiv · 1906.07611

Simple Algorithms for Dueling Bandits

Tyler Lekang·Andrew Lamperski
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Abstract

In this paper, we present simple algorithms for Dueling Bandits. We prove that the algorithms have regret bounds for time horizon T of order O(T^rho ) with 1/2 <= rho <= 3/4, which importantly do not depend on any preference gap between actions, Delta. Dueling Bandits is an important extension of the Multi-Armed Bandit problem, in which the algorithm must select two actions at a time and only receives binary feedback for the duel outcome. This is analogous to comparisons in which the rater can only provide yes/no or better/worse type responses. We compare our simple algorithms to the current state-of-the-art for Dueling Bandits, ISS and DTS, discussing complexity and regret upper bounds, and conducting experiments on synthetic data that demonstrate their regret performance, which in some cases exceeds state-of-the-art.

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Tyler Lekang, Andrew Lamperski. 2019-06-18. Simple Algorithms for Dueling Bandits. https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.07611

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