5 ms·

Isn't this just breadth- vs depth-first search ?

• hansvm 3y ago
  Not really. You're making the choice to explore or exploit at each branch. It's closer to an A-star search, where the weights and heuristics are uncovered over time. Also, the typical framing of the problem is the same "kind" of choice being repeatedly executed (e.g., betting on a coin-flip of unknown bias, or balancing the gain of consumer purchasing information vs exploiting known information when setting items into aisle end-caps in a grocery store). That has a lot more structure than arbitrary graphs, enough so to make it worthy of its own dedicated study (especially given the real-world applicability).