/multi_armed_bandit

Primary LanguageRubyMIT LicenseMIT

MultiArmedBandit

This repo contains Ruby code for solving Multi-Armed Bandit problems. This includes the following algorithms:

  • Epsilon-Greedy
  • Softmax

Othrer major algorithms such as UCB and Bayesian Bandit will be forthcoming.

Installation

By executing the following line, you can install the gem from the GitHub repo.

$ gem specific_install -l 'git://github.com/vasilyjp/multi_armed_bandit.git'

Usage

Include MultiArmedBandit module by putting the following code.

require 'multi_armed_bandit'
include MultiArmedBandit

Create an object of Softmax class. The first param is temperature. If we set temperature = 0.0, this will give us deterministic choice of the arm which has highest value. In contrast, if we set temperature = ∞, all actions have nearly the same probability. In a pracitcal sense, temperature tend to be between 0.01 and 1.0.

The second param is number of arms.

sm = MultiArmedBandit::Softmax.new(0.01, 3)

By giving lists of number of trials and rewards to bulk_update methd, it returns the predicted probabilities.

# Trial 1
probs = sm.bulk_update([1000,1000,1000], [72,57,49])
counts = probs.map{|p| (p*3000).round }

# Trial 2
probs = sm.bulk_update(counts, [154,17,32])

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/vasilyjp/multi_armed_bandit. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.