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We study the problem of dynamic batch learning in high-dimensional sparse linear contextual bandits, where a decision maker, under a given maximum-number-of-batch constraint and only able to observe rewards at the end of each batch, can…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-07-19 Zhimei Ren , Zhengyuan Zhou

We explore a multiple-stage variant of the min-max robust selection problem with budgeted uncertainty that includes queries. First, one queries a subset of items and gets the exact values of their uncertain parameters. Given this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-07 Xiaoyu Chen , Marc Goerigk , Michael Poss

Assortment optimization is a fundamental challenge in modern retail and recommendation systems, where the goal is to select a subset of products that maximizes expected revenue under complex customer choice behaviors. While recent advances…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-11 Miao Lu , Yuxuan Han , Han Zhong , Zhengyuan Zhou , Jose Blanchet

When an Agent visits a platform recommending a menu of content to select from, their choice of item depends not only on fixed preferences, but also on their prior engagements with the platform. The Recommender's primary objective is…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2022-10-26 Arpit Agarwal , William Brown

In algorithm optimization in reinforcement learning, how to deal with the exploration-exploitation dilemma is particularly important. Multi-armed bandit problem can optimize the proposed solutions by changing the reward distribution to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-28 Zhendong Shi , Ercan E. Kuruoglu , Xiaoli Wei

We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Shuchi Chawla , Dimitris Christou , Amit Harlev , Ziv Scully

Most modern systems strive to learn from interactions with users, and many engage in exploration: making potentially suboptimal choices for the sake of acquiring new information. We initiate a study of the interplay between exploration and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-11-21 Yishay Mansour , Aleksandrs Slivkins , Zhiwei Steven Wu

Multi-objective combinatorial optimization seeks Pareto-optimal solutions over exponentially large discrete spaces, yet existing methods sacrifice generality, scalability, or theoretical guarantees. We reformulate it as an online learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Esha Singh , Dongxia Wu , Chien-Yi Yang , Tajana Rosing , Rose Yu , Yi-An Ma

We seek to take a different approach in deriving the optimal search policy for the repeated consumer search model found in Fishman and Rob (1995) with the main motivation of dropping the assumption of prior knowledge of the price…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-12-24 Tung Yu Marco Chan

We consider a setting where $n$ buyers, with combinatorial preferences over $m$ items, and a seller, running a priority-based allocation mechanism, repeatedly interact. Our goal, from observing limited information about the results of these…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-08-29 Avrim Blum , Yishay Mansour , Jamie Morgenstern

Web-based applications such as chatbots, search engines and news recommendations continue to grow in scale and complexity with the recent surge in the adoption of LLMs. Online model selection has thus garnered increasing attention due to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-13 Yu Xia , Fang Kong , Tong Yu , Liya Guo , Ryan A. Rossi , Sungchul Kim , Shuai Li

We consider the problem of contextual bandits and imitation learning, where the learner lacks direct knowledge of the executed action's reward. Instead, the learner can actively query an expert at each round to compare two actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-25 Ayush Sekhari , Karthik Sridharan , Wen Sun , Runzhe Wu

We consider the problem of reward maximization in the dueling bandit setup along with constraints on resource consumption. As in the classic dueling bandits, at each round the learner has to choose a pair of items from a set of $K$ items…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-29 Rohan Deb , Aadirupa Saha

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-04 Amin Karbasi , Vahab Mirrokni , Mohammad Shadravan

We investigate the problem of best-policy identification in discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the learner has access to a generative model. The objective is to devise a learning algorithm returning the best policy as early as…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-05-11 Aymen Al Marjani , Alexandre Proutiere

We study model selection in linear bandits, where the learner must adapt to the dimension (denoted by $d_\star$) of the smallest hypothesis class containing the true linear model while balancing exploration and exploitation. Previous papers…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-17 Yinglun Zhu , Robert Nowak

We study exploration in stochastic multi-armed bandits when we have access to a divisible resource that can be allocated in varying amounts to arm pulls. We focus in particular on the allocation of distributed computing resources, where we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-08 Brijen Thananjeyan , Kirthevasan Kandasamy , Ion Stoica , Michael I. Jordan , Ken Goldberg , Joseph E. Gonzalez

Sample-efficient exploration is crucial not only for discovering rewarding experiences but also for adapting to environment changes in a task-agnostic fashion. A principled treatment of the problem of optimal input synthesis for system…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-10 Matthias Schultheis , Boris Belousov , Hany Abdulsamad , Jan Peters

We study sequential decision-making with known rewards and unknown constraints, motivated by situations where the constraints represent expensive-to-evaluate human preferences, such as safe and comfortable driving behavior. We formalize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-13 David Lindner , Sebastian Tschiatschek , Katja Hofmann , Andreas Krause

In this paper, we study utilizing neural networks for the exploitation and exploration of contextual multi-armed bandits. Contextual multi-armed bandits have been studied for decades with various applications. To solve the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Yikun Ban , Yuchen Yan , Arindam Banerjee , Jingrui He