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Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithms are a widely-used class of sequential algorithms for the $K$-armed bandit problem. Despite extensive research over the past decades aimed at understanding their asymptotic and (near) minimax…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-12-10 Qiyang Han , Koulik Khamaru , Cun-Hui Zhang

The matrix contextual bandit (CB), as an extension of the well-known multi-armed bandit, is a powerful framework that has been widely applied in sequential decision-making scenarios involving low-rank structure. In many real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-24 Yao Wang , Jiannan Li , Yue Kang , Shanxing Gao , Zhenxin Xiao

We introduce a Multi-User Contextual Cascading Bandit model, a new combinatorial bandit framework that captures realistic online advertising scenarios where multiple users interact with sequentially displayed items simultaneously. Unlike…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Jiho Park , Huiwen Jia

We study how to make decisions that minimize Bayesian regret in offline linear bandits. Prior work suggests that one must take actions with maximum lower confidence bound (LCB) on their reward. We argue that the reliance on LCB is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-04 Marek Petrik , Guy Tennenholtz , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh

In decision-making problems such as the multi-armed bandit, an agent learns sequentially by optimizing a certain feedback. While the mean reward criterion has been extensively studied, other measures that reflect an aversion to adverse…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-03-28 Patrick Saux , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

Contextual bandit algorithms are sensitive to the estimation method of the outcome model as well as the exploration method used, particularly in the presence of rich heterogeneity or complex outcome models, which can lead to difficult…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-18 Maria Dimakopoulou , Zhengyuan Zhou , Susan Athey , Guido Imbens

Conversational contextual bandits elicit user preferences by occasionally querying for explicit feedback on key-terms to accelerate learning. However, there are aspects of existing approaches which limit their performance. First,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-03 Zhiyong Wang , Xutong Liu , Shuai Li , John C. S. Lui

We consider the problem of finitely parameterized multi-armed bandits where the model of the underlying stochastic environment can be characterized based on a common unknown parameter. The true parameter is unknown to the learning agent.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-10 Kishan Panaganti , Dileep Kalathil

We study contextual bandits in the presence of a stage-wise constraint when the constraint must be satisfied both with high probability and in expectation. We start with the linear case where both the reward function and the stage-wise…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-22 Aldo Pacchiano , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Peter Bartlett

The contextual bandit has been identified as a powerful framework to formulate the recommendation process as a sequential decision-making process, where each item is regarded as an arm and the objective is to minimize the regret of $T$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-30 Yikun Ban , Yunzhe Qi , Tianxin Wei , Lihui Liu , Jingrui He

Bayesian bandit algorithms with approximate Bayesian inference have been widely used in real-world applications. Despite the superior practical performance, their theoretical justification is less investigated in the literature, especially…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-23 Ziyi Huang , Henry Lam , Haofeng Zhang

The rapid proliferation of decentralized learning systems mandates the need for differentially-private cooperative learning. In this paper, we study this in context of the contextual linear bandit: we consider a collection of agents…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-23 Abhimanyu Dubey , Alex Pentland

In this work, we address the open problem of finding low-complexity near-optimal multi-armed bandit algorithms for sequential decision making problems. Existing bandit algorithms are either sub-optimal and computationally simple (e.g.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-18 Fang Liu , Sinong Wang , Swapna Buccapatnam , Ness Shroff

The safe linear bandit problem is a version of the classical stochastic linear bandit problem where the learner's actions must satisfy an uncertain constraint at all rounds. Due its applicability to many real-world settings, this problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-13 Spencer Hutchinson , Berkay Turan , Mahnoosh Alizadeh

The contextual multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is crucial in sequential decision-making. A line of research, known as online clustering of bandits, extends contextual MAB by grouping similar users into clusters, utilizing shared features…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-03 Zhuohua Li , Maoli Liu , Xiangxiang Dai , John C. S. Lui

The paper considers the problem of global optimization in the setup of stochastic process bandits. We introduce an UCB algorithm which builds a cascade of discretization trees based on generic chaining in order to render possible his…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-02-22 Emile Contal , Nicolas Vayatis

Many applications require a learner to make sequential decisions given uncertainty regarding both the system's payoff function and safety constraints. In safety-critical systems, it is paramount that the learner's actions do not violate the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-06 Sanae Amani , Mahnoosh Alizadeh , Christos Thrampoulidis

Linear contextual bandit is a popular online learning problem. It has been mostly studied in centralized learning settings. With the surging demand of large-scale decentralized model learning, e.g., federated learning, how to retain regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-05 Chuanhao Li , Hongning Wang

This paper considers contextual bandits with a finite number of arms, where the contexts are independent and identically distributed $d$-dimensional random vectors, and the expected rewards are linear in both the arm parameters and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-07 Yanglei Song , Meng zhou

Contextual bandit with linear reward functions is among one of the most extensively studied models in bandit and online learning research. Recently, there has been increasing interest in designing \emph{locally private} linear contextual…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-04-16 Jiachun Li , David Simchi-Levi , Yining Wang