Related papers: Model-Independent Online Learning for Influence Ma…
We consider the classic online learning and stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems, when at each step, the online policy can probe and find out which of a small number ($k$) of choices has better reward (or loss) before making its…
How would admissions look like in a university program for influencers? In the realm of social network analysis, influence maximization and link prediction stand out as pivotal challenges. Influence maximization focuses on identifying a set…
Machine Learning (ML) models are increasingly used to support or substitute decision making. In applications where skilled experts are a limited resource, it is crucial to reduce their burden and automate decisions when the performance of…
We consider the problem of maximizing the spread of influence in a social network by choosing a fixed number of initial seeds, formally referred to as the influence maximization problem. It admits a $(1-1/e)$-factor approximation algorithm…
The last decade has witnessed many successes of deep learning-based models for industry-scale recommender systems. These models are typically trained offline in a batch manner. While being effective in capturing users' past interactions…
We study the problem of online learning in adversarial bandit problems under a partial observability model called off-policy feedback. In this sequential decision making problem, the learner cannot directly observe its rewards, but instead…
We investigate the novel problem of voting-based opinion maximization in a social network: Find a given number of seed nodes for a target campaigner, in the presence of other competing campaigns, so as to maximize a voting-based score for…
Influence maximization is a widely used model for information dissemination in social networks. Recent work has employed such interventions across a wide range of social problems, spanning public health, substance abuse, and international…
We initiate a systematic study on $\mathit{dynamic}$ $\mathit{influence}$ $\mathit{maximization}$ (DIM). In the DIM problem, one maintains a seed set $S$ of at most $k$ nodes in a dynamically involving social network, with the goal of…
This paper studies the multi-cascade influence maximization problem, which explores strategies for launching one information cascade in a social network with multiple existing cascades. With natural extensions to the classic models, we…
In this paper, we study the Multi-Round Influence Maximization (MRIM) problem, where influence propagates in multiple rounds independently from possibly different seed sets, and the goal is to select seeds for each round to maximize the…
We study the problem of minimizing regret in multi-mode advertisement settings, where an influence provider allocates advertising resources such as social network seeds and billboard slots to multiple advertisers with specified influence…
Influence Maximization is an extensively-studied problem that targets at selecting a set of initial seed nodes in the Online Social Networks (OSNs) to spread the influence as widely as possible. However, it remains an open challenge to…
Influence maximization in social networks has typically been studied in the context of contagion models and irreversible processes. In this paper, we consider an alternate model that treats individual opinions as spins in an Ising system at…
Traditional viral marketing problems aim at selecting a subset of seed users for one single product to maximize its awareness in social networks. However, in real scenarios, multiple products can be promoted in social networks at the same…
Multi-arm bandit (MAB) is a classic online learning framework that studies the sequential decision-making in an uncertain environment. The MAB framework, however, overlooks the scenario where the decision-maker cannot take actions (e.g.,…
Increasingly, recommender systems are tasked with improving users' long-term satisfaction. In this context, we study a content exploration task, which we formalize as a bandit problem with delayed rewards. There is an apparent trade-off in…
We propose a contextual bandit based model to capture the learning and social welfare goals of a web platform in the presence of myopic users. By using payments to incentivize these agents to explore different items/recommendations, we show…
Social networks, due to their popularity, have been studied extensively these years. A rich body of these studies is related to influence maximization, which aims to select a set of seed nodes for maximizing the expected number of active…
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.…