English
Related papers

Related papers: Minimax-optimal Inference from Partial Rankings

200 papers

Linear fixed point equations in Hilbert spaces arise in a variety of settings, including reinforcement learning, and computational methods for solving differential and integral equations. We study methods that use a collection of random…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-11 Wenlong Mou , Ashwin Pananjady , Martin J. Wainwright

Approaches for estimating preferences from human annotated data typically involves inducing a distribution over a ranked list of choices such as the Plackett-Luce model. Indeed, modern AI alignment tools such as Reward Modelling and Direct…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-20 Chirag Nagpal

We consider PAC-learning a good item from $k$-subsetwise feedback information sampled from a Plackett-Luce probability model, with instance-dependent sample complexity performance. In the setting where subsets of a fixed size can be tested…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-28 Aadirupa Saha , Aditya Gopalan

In this note, we investigate how well we can reconstruct the best rank-$r$ approximation of a large matrix from a small number of its entries. We show that even if a data matrix is of full rank and cannot be approximated well by a low-rank…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-11-12 Shun Xu , Ming Yuan

Sparse reduced rank regression is an essential statistical learning method. In the contemporary literature, estimation is typically formulated as a nonconvex optimization that often yields to a local optimum in numerical computation. Yet,…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-12-06 Canhong Wen , Ruipeng Dong , Xueqin Wang , Weiyu Li , Heping Zhang

A preference order or ranking aggregated from pairwise comparison data is commonly understood as a strict total order. However, in real-world scenarios, some items are intrinsically ambiguous in comparisons, which may very well be an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-31 Qianqian Xu , Jiechao Xiong , Xinwei Sun , Zhiyong Yang , Xiaochun Cao , Qingming Huang , Yuan Yao

We consider an online model for recommendation systems, with each user being recommended an item at each time-step and providing 'like' or 'dislike' feedback. A latent variable model specifies the user preferences: both users and items are…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-29 Mina Karzand , Guy Bresler

Given an undirected graph representing similarities between a set of items and an additive measure evaluating the items, we treat the position of a special subset of items in an ordinal ranking through a collection of combinatorial…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Samuel Boardman

The elicitation of an ordinal judgment on multiple alternatives is often required in many psychological and behavioral experiments to investigate preference/choice orientation of a specific population. The Plackett-Luce model is one of the…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-10-10 Cristina Mollica , Luca Tardella

A central problem in business concerns the optimal allocation of limited resources to a set of available tasks, where the payoff of these tasks is inherently uncertain. In credit card fraud detection, for instance, a bank can only assign a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-10 Toon Vanderschueren , Bart Baesens , Tim Verdonck , Wouter Verbeke

Learning the optimal ordering of content is an important challenge in website design. The learning to rank (LTR) framework models this problem as a sequential problem of selecting lists of content and observing where users decide to click.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-12 James A. Grant , David S. Leslie

Recent work has proposed stochastic Plackett-Luce (PL) ranking models as a robust choice for optimizing relevance and fairness metrics. Unlike their deterministic counterparts that require heuristic optimization algorithms, PL models are…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2021-07-08 Harrie Oosterhuis

Learning to rank is an important problem in machine learning and recommender systems. In a recommender system, a user is typically recommended a list of items. Since the user is unlikely to examine the entire recommended list, partial…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2018-11-22 Prakhar Gupta , Gaurush Hiranandani , Harvineet Singh , Branislav Kveton , Zheng Wen , Iftikhar Ahamath Burhanuddin

We study the fundamental problem of offline assortment optimization under the Multinomial Logit (MNL) model, where sellers must determine the optimal subset of the products to offer based solely on historical customer choice data. While…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-26 Yuxuan Han , Han Zhong , Miao Lu , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

This paper studies a stylized, yet natural, learning-to-rank problem and points out the critical incorrectness of a widely used nearest neighbor algorithm. We consider a model with $n$ agents (users) $\{x_i\}_{i \in [n]}$ and $m$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-11 Ao Liu , Qiong Wu , Zhenming Liu , Lirong Xia

Assortment optimization has received active explorations in the past few decades due to its practical importance. Despite the extensive literature dealing with optimization algorithms and latent score estimation, uncertainty quantification…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-05-05 Shuting Shen , Xi Chen , Ethan X. Fang , Junwei Lu

This paper explores the preference-based top-$K$ rank aggregation problem. Suppose that a collection of items is repeatedly compared in pairs, and one wishes to recover a consistent ordering that emphasizes the top-$K$ ranked items, based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-05-29 Yuxin Chen , Changho Suh

Random utility theory models an agent's preferences on alternatives by drawing a real-valued score on each alternative (typically independently) from a parameterized distribution, and then ranking the alternatives according to scores. A…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2012-11-13 Hossein Azari Soufiani , David C. Parkes , Lirong Xia

We address the problem of active online assortment optimization problem with preference feedback, which is a framework for modeling user choices and subsetwise utility maximization. The framework is useful in various real-world applications…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-01 Aadirupa Saha , Pierre Gaillard

We consider an online model for recommendation systems, with each user being recommended an item at each time-step and providing 'like' or 'dislike' feedback. Each user may be recommended a given item at most once. A latent variable model…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-05-08 Guy Bresler , Mina Karzand