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We present improved algorithms with worst-case regret guarantees for the stochastic linear bandit problem. The widely used "optimism in the face of uncertainty" principle reduces a stochastic bandit problem to the construction of a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-09-06 Hamish Flynn , David Reeb , Melih Kandemir , Jan Peters

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-18 Wonyoung Kim

We introduce efficient algorithms which achieve nearly optimal regrets for the problem of stochastic online shortest path routing with end-to-end feedback. The setting is a natural application of the combinatorial stochastic bandits…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-20 Ruihao Zhu , Eytan Modiano

Thompson sampling is one of the earliest randomized algorithms for multi-armed bandits (MAB). In this paper, we extend the Thompson sampling to Budgeted MAB, where there is random cost for pulling an arm and the total cost is constrained by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-05-04 Yingce Xia , Haifang Li , Tao Qin , Nenghai Yu , Tie-Yan Liu

Generative flow networks (GFlowNets) are amortized variational inference algorithms that treat sampling from a distribution over compositional objects as a sequential decision-making problem with a learnable action policy. Unlike other…

Meta-, multi-task, and federated learning can be all viewed as solving similar tasks, drawn from a distribution that reflects task similarities. We provide a unified view of all these problems, as learning to act in a hierarchical Bayesian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Joey Hong , Branislav Kveton , Manzil Zaheer , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh

We study Thompson sampling (TS) in online decision making, where the uncertain environment is sampled from a mixture distribution. This is relevant in multi-task learning, where a learning agent faces different classes of problems. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Joey Hong , Branislav Kveton , Manzil Zaheer , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Craig Boutilier

We consider the contextual bandit problem, where a player sequentially makes decisions based on past observations to maximize the cumulative reward. Although many algorithms have been proposed for contextual bandit, most of them rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-08 Qin Ding , Cho-Jui Hsieh , James Sharpnack

Thompson sampling (TS) is widely used for stochastic multi-armed bandits, yet its inferential properties under adaptive data collection are subtle. Classical asymptotic theory for sample means can fail because arm-specific sample sizes are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Shunxing Yan , Han Zhong

We provide an approach for the analysis of randomised exploration algorithms like Thompson sampling that does not rely on forced optimism or posterior inflation. With this, we demonstrate that in the $d$-dimensional linear bandit setting,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-14 Marc Abeille , David Janz , Ciara Pike-Burke

Adaptive experimentation under unknown network interference requires solving two coupled problems: (i) learning the underlying dynamics of interference among units and (ii) using these dynamics to inform treatment allocation in order to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-13 Aidan Gleich , Eric Laber , Alexander Volfovsky

This paper proposes regenerative particle Thompson sampling (RPTS), a flexible variation of Thompson sampling. Thompson sampling itself is a Bayesian heuristic for solving stochastic bandit problems, but it is hard to implement in practice…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-24 Zeyu Zhou , Bruce Hajek , Nakjung Choi , Anwar Walid

Thompson sampling (TS) is a popular heuristic for action selection, but it requires sampling from a posterior distribution. Unfortunately, this can become computationally intractable in complex environments, such as those modeled using…

We address differentially private stochastic bandit problems from the angles of exploring the deep connections among Thompson Sampling with Gaussian priors, Gaussian mechanisms, and Gaussian differential privacy (GDP). We propose DP-TS-UCB,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Bingshan Hu , Zhiming Huang , Tianyue H. Zhang , Mathias Lécuyer , Nidhi Hegde

We consider the exploration-exploitation tradeoff in linear quadratic (LQ) control problems, where the state dynamics is linear and the cost function is quadratic in states and controls. We analyze the regret of Thompson sampling (TS)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-03-28 Marc Abeille , Alessandro Lazaric

In this paper, the causal bandit problem is investigated, with the objective of maximizing the long-term reward by selecting an optimal sequence of interventions on nodes in an unknown causal graph. It is assumed that both the causal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-30 Chen Peng , Di Zhang , Urbashi Mitra

We consider the multi armed bandit problem in non-stationary environments. Based on the Bayesian method, we propose a variant of Thompson Sampling which can be used in both rested and restless bandit scenarios. Applying discounting to the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-08-01 Vishnu Raj , Sheetal Kalyani

We consider the multiarm bandit problems in the timevarying dynamic system for rich structural features. For the nonlinear dynamic model, we propose the approximate inference for the posterior distributions based on Laplace Approximation.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-10-21 Tianbing Xu , Yaming Yu , John Turner , Amelia Regan

Contextual bandits serve as a fundamental algorithmic framework for optimizing recommendation decisions online. Though extensive attention has been paid to tailoring contextual bandits for recommendation applications, the "herding effects"…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-29 Luyue Xu , Liming Wang , Hong Xie , Mingqiang Zhou

As two popular schools of machine learning, online learning and evolutionary computations have become two important driving forces behind real-world decision making engines for applications in biomedicine, economics, and engineering fields.…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2022-05-24 Baihan Lin