Stoppable families of alternative bandit processes

Abstract

Stoppable families of alternative bandit processes are decision processes with the property that at each decision epoch the choice is between allocating service to one of the constituent bandit processes or stopping and deciding in favour of one of them. The problem is considered of finding optimal (or good suboptimal) strategies for such processes. The theory for non-stoppable families leads us to study the performance of a simple strategy. This is shown to be optimal under certain conditions. These conditions are discussed and an example relating to research planning is given.