Upper Confidence Bounds

Upper Confidence Bounds (UCB) are strategies used in decision-making, especially under uncertainty. They help balance exploration (trying new options) and exploitation (choosing known good options). In UCB, each option gets a score based on its average performance and a measure of uncertainty. The idea is to select the option with the highest upper bound of potential success, accounting for both what is known and what is still uncertain. This approach helps in making informed choices, especially in scenarios like online recommendations or adaptive learning systems, where discovering new opportunities is as important as using the best-known option.