Related papers: Further Optimal Regret Bounds for Thompson Samplin…
In this paper, we prove the first Bayesian regret bounds for Thompson Sampling in reinforcement learning in a multitude of settings. We simplify the learning problem using a discrete set of surrogate environments, and present a refined…
We study the problem of finding the optimal dosage in early stage clinical trials through the multi-armed bandit lens. We advocate the use of the Thompson Sampling principle, a flexible algorithm that can accommodate different types of…
Meta-learning is characterized by its ability to learn how to learn, enabling the adaptation of learning strategies across different tasks. Recent research introduced the Meta-Thompson Sampling (Meta-TS), which meta-learns an unknown prior…
We propose ${\tt AdaTS}$, a Thompson sampling algorithm that adapts sequentially to bandit tasks that it interacts with. The key idea in ${\tt AdaTS}$ is to adapt to an unknown task prior distribution by maintaining a distribution over its…
Bayesian bandit algorithms with approximate Bayesian inference have been widely used in real-world applications. However, there is a large discrepancy between the superior practical performance of these approaches and their theoretical…
We study a generalization of the multi-armed bandit problem with multiple plays where there is a cost associated with pulling each arm and the agent has a budget at each time that dictates how much she can expect to spend. We derive an…
In linear contextual bandits, the objective is to select actions that maximize cumulative rewards, modeled as a linear function with unknown parameters. Although Thompson Sampling performs well empirically, it does not achieve optimal…
This paper introduces and addresses a wide class of stochastic bandit problems where the function mapping the arm to the corresponding reward exhibits some known structural properties. Most existing structures (e.g. linear, Lipschitz,…
This note introduce three Bayesian style Multi-armed bandit algorithms: Information-directed sampling, Thompson Sampling and Generalized Thompson Sampling. The goal is to give an intuitive explanation for these three algorithms and their…
We study a widely used Bayesian optimization method, Gaussian process Thompson sampling (GP-TS), under the assumption that the objective function is a sample path from a GP. Compared with the GP upper confidence bound (GP-UCB) with…
How can we make use of information parallelism in online decision making problems while efficiently balancing the exploration-exploitation trade-off? In this paper, we introduce a batch Thompson Sampling framework for two canonical online…
The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a ubiquitous decision-making problem that exemplifies exploration-exploitation tradeoff. Standard formulations exclude risk in decision making. Risknotably complicates the basic reward-maximising…
Existing data-dependent and best-of-both-worlds regret bounds for multi-armed bandits problems have limited adaptivity as they are either data-dependent but not best-of-both-worlds (BOBW), BOBW but not data-dependent or have sub-optimal…
We revisit combinatorial Thompson sampling (CTS) for semi-bandits with sleeping arms, where arm availability varies over time and actions must satisfy combinatorial constraints, as in wireless mesh routing with fluctuating link…
Stochastic linear bandits are a fundamental model for sequential decision making, where an agent selects a vector-valued action and receives a noisy reward with expected value given by an unknown linear function. Although well studied in…
A stochastic combinatorial semi-bandit is an online learning problem where at each step a learning agent chooses a subset of ground items subject to constraints, and then observes stochastic weights of these items and receives their sum as…
Thompson Sampling has generated significant interest due to its better empirical performance than upper confidence bound based algorithms. In this paper, we study Thompson Sampling based algorithm for Unsupervised Sequential Selection (USS)…
We consider model selection in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. Given a set of base learning algorithms, an effective model selection strategy adapts to the best learning algorithm in an online fashion. We show that by…
The stochastic multi-arm bandit problem has been extensively studied under standard assumptions on the arm's distribution (e.g bounded with known support, exponential family, etc). These assumptions are suitable for many real-world problems…
In this paper we consider the contextual multi-armed bandit problem for linear payoffs under a risk-averse criterion. At each round, contexts are revealed for each arm, and the decision maker chooses one arm to pull and receives the…