The Investigation of Progress and Application in the Multi-Armed Bandit Algorithm

Abstract

This article delves deeply into the development process and practical applications of the multi-armed bandit algorithm in the current digital era. With the continuous popularity of online advertising and online learning, information has grown explosively, making decision optimization crucial. The multi-armed bandit algorithm, as a sequential decision-making model, encompasses common algorithms such as the greedy algorithm, -greedy algorithm, UCB algorithm, and Thompson sampling. Its main role is to seek the best balance between exploration and exploitation to solve the fundamental problems in reinforcement learning. The article introduces an internationally released datasets, namely MovieLens, and elaborates in detail a series of indicators for evaluation, including the average number of friends per user, the average number of listened-to artists per user, the average number of movie rating times, the average number of tags added by users, content diversity indicators, and statistics on the differences in click-through rates of recommendations for different types of movies. In addition, the article also presents the specific methods of literature collection, screening, analysis, and review. Its purpose is to understand the multi-armed bandit algorithm more deeply and provide strong guidance for the future development and wide application of this algorithm in various fields.