Related papers: Parallelizing Exploration-Exploitation Tradeoffs w…
This paper considers the use of a simple posterior sampling algorithm to balance between exploration and exploitation when learning to optimize actions such as in multi-armed bandit problems. The algorithm, also known as Thompson Sampling,…
We consider Bayesian optimization using Gaussian Process models, also referred to as kernel-based bandit optimization. We study the methodology of exploring the domain using random samples drawn from a distribution. We show that this random…
Balancing exploration and exploitation has been an important problem in both game tree search and automated planning. However, while the problem has been extensively analyzed within the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) literature, the planning…
The Gaussian process bandit is a problem in which we want to find a maximizer of a black-box function with the minimum number of function evaluations. If the black-box function varies with time, then time-varying Bayesian optimization is a…
This paper proposes a new algorithm, referred to as GMAB, that combines concepts from the reinforcement learning domain of multi-armed bandits and random search strategies from the domain of genetic algorithms to solve discrete stochastic…
We consider the problem of sequentially maximising an unknown function over a set of actions while ensuring that every sampled point has a function value below a given safety threshold. We model the function using kernel-based and Gaussian…
Selecting the best alternative from a finite set represents a broad class of pure exploration problems. Traditional approaches to pure exploration have predominantly relied on Gaussian or sub-Gaussian assumptions on the performance…
Multi-armed bandit problems are the predominant theoretical model of exploration-exploitation tradeoffs in learning, and they have countless applications ranging from medical trials, to communication networks, to Web search and advertising.…
We consider a contextual bandit problem with a combinatorial action set and time-varying base arm availability. At the beginning of each round, the agent observes the set of available base arms and their contexts and then selects an action…
Consider the sequential optimization of a continuous, possibly non-convex, and expensive to evaluate objective function $f$. The problem can be cast as a Gaussian Process (GP) bandit where $f$ lives in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space…
We address the problem of Gaussian Process (GP) optimization in the presence of unknown and potentially varying adversarial perturbations. Unlike traditional robust optimization approaches that focus on maximizing performance under…
We study distributed cooperative decision-making under the explore-exploit tradeoff in the multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem. We extend the state-of-the-art frequentist and Bayesian algorithms for single-agent MAB problems to cooperative…
We consider the two-armed bandit problem as applied to data processing if there are two alternative processing methods available with different a priori unknown efficiencies. One should determine the most effective method and provide its…
Contextual multi-armed bandit problems arise frequently in important industrial applications. Existing solutions model the context either linearly, which enables uncertainty driven (principled) exploration, or non-linearly, by using…
By enabling constraint-aware online model adaptation, model predictive control using Gaussian process (GP) regression has exhibited impressive performance in real-world applications and received considerable attention in the learning-based…
Bandit problems model the trade-off between exploration and exploitation in various decision problems. We study two-armed bandit problems in continuous time, where the risky arm can have two types: High or Low; both types yield stochastic…
This paper addresses the Bayesian optimization problem (also referred to as the Bayesian setting of the Gaussian process bandit), where the learner seeks to minimize the regret under a function drawn from a known Gaussian process (GP).…
Computing a Gaussian process (GP) posterior has a computational cost cubical in the number of historical points. A reformulation of the same GP posterior highlights that this complexity mainly depends on how many \emph{unique} historical…
In this work, we study Bayesian quantum parameter estimation given a finite number of uses of the process encoding one or more unknown physical quantities. For multiple uses, it is conventional to classify quantum metrological protocols as…
In this paper, we propose and study opportunistic bandits - a new variant of bandits where the regret of pulling a suboptimal arm varies under different environmental conditions, such as network load or produce price. When the load/price is…