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Bandit algorithms have been predominantly analyzed in the convex setting with function-value based stationary regret as the performance measure. In this paper, motivated by online reinforcement learning problems, we propose and analyze…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-09-12 Abhishek Roy , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Saeed Ghadimi , Prasant Mohapatra

The stochastic multi-armed bandit setting has been recently studied in the non-stationary regime, where the mean payoff of each action is a non-decreasing function of the number of rounds passed since it was last played. This model captures…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-13 Orestis Papadigenopoulos , Constantine Caramanis , Sanjay Shakkottai

Multi-armed bandit (MAB) is a class of online learning problems where a learning agent aims to maximize its expected cumulative reward while repeatedly selecting to pull arms with unknown reward distributions. We consider a scenario where…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-01-25 Yang Cao , Zheng Wen , Branislav Kveton , Yao Xie

In many applications of online decision making, the environment is non-stationary and it is therefore crucial to use bandit algorithms that handle changes. Most existing approaches are designed to protect against non-smooth changes,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Su Jia , Qian Xie , Nathan Kallus , Peter I. Frazier

We consider the problem of controlling a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) system over a finite horizon $T$ with fixed and known cost matrices $Q,R$, but unknown and non-stationary dynamics $\{A_t, B_t\}$. The sequence of dynamics matrices…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-21 Yuwei Luo , Varun Gupta , Mladen Kolar

We investigate two perturbation approaches to overcome conservatism that optimism based algorithms chronically suffer from in practice. The first approach replaces optimism with a simple randomization when using confidence sets. The second…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-13 Baekjin Kim , Ambuj Tewari

This paper is in the field of stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits (MABs), i.e., those sequential selection techniques able to learn online using only the feedback given by the chosen option (a.k.a. arm). We study a particular case of the rested…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-08 Alberto Maria Metelli , Francesco Trovò , Matteo Pirola , Marcello Restelli

We study dynamic regret minimization in unconstrained adversarial linear bandit problems. In this setting, a learner must minimize the cumulative loss relative to an arbitrary sequence of comparators…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Alberto Rumi , Andrew Jacobsen , Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi , Fabio Vitale

We study the non-stationary dueling bandits problem with $K$ arms, where the time horizon $T$ consists of $M$ stationary segments, each of which is associated with its own preference matrix. The learner repeatedly selects a pair of arms and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-03 Patrick Kolpaczki , Viktor Bengs , Eyke Hüllermeier

We study the multi-armed bandit problem with adversarially chosen delays in the Best-of-Both-Worlds (BoBW) framework, which aims to achieve near-optimal performance in both stochastic and adversarial environments. While prior work has made…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Ofir Schlisselberg , Tal Lancewicki , Peter Auer , Yishay Mansour

Cascading bandit (CB) is a popular model for web search and online advertising, where an agent aims to learn the $K$ most attractive items out of a ground set of size $L$ during the interaction with a user. However, the stationary CB model…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-18 Lingda Wang , Huozhi Zhou , Bingcong Li , Lav R. Varshney , Zhizhen Zhao

In this paper, we study a special bandit setting of online stochastic linear optimization, where only one-bit of information is revealed to the learner at each round. This problem has found many applications including online advertisement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-09-28 Lijun Zhang , Tianbao Yang , Rong Jin , Zhi-Hua Zhou

We study bandit model selection in stochastic environments. Our approach relies on a meta-algorithm that selects between candidate base algorithms. We develop a meta-algorithm-base algorithm abstraction that can work with general classes of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Aldo Pacchiano , My Phan , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Anup Rao , Julian Zimmert , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvari

Dueling bandits is a prominent framework for decision-making involving preferential feedback, a valuable feature that fits various applications involving human interaction, such as ranking, information retrieval, and recommendation systems.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-16 Qiwei Di , Tao Jin , Yue Wu , Heyang Zhao , Farzad Farnoud , Quanquan Gu

In $K$-armed dueling bandits, the learner receives preference feedback between arms, and the regret of an arm is defined in terms of its suboptimality to a $\textit{winner}$ arm. The $\textit{non-stationary}$ variant of the problem,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-01 Joe Suk , Arpit Agarwal

We study a class of adversarial bandit optimization problems in which the loss functions may be non-convex and non-smooth. In each round, the learner observes a loss that consists of an underlying linear component together with an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Zhuoyu Cheng , Kohei Hatano , Eiji Takimoto

We consider un-discounted reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) under drifting non-stationarity, i.e., both the reward and state transition distributions are allowed to evolve over time, as long as their respective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-26 Wang Chi Cheung , David Simchi-Levi , Ruihao Zhu

In this paper, we study differentially private online learning problems in a stochastic environment under both bandit and full information feedback. For differentially private stochastic bandits, we propose both UCB and Thompson…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-31 Bingshan Hu , Zhiming Huang , Nishant A. Mehta , Nidhi Hegde

We consider stochastic non-stationary linear bandits where the linear parameter connecting contexts to the reward changes over time. Existing algorithms in this setting localize the policy by gradually discarding or down-weighting past…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-05 Margherita Lazzaretto , Jonas Peters , Niklas Pfister

Although online convex optimization (OCO) under arbitrary delays has received increasing attention recently, previous studies focus on stationary environments with the goal of minimizing static regret. In this paper, we investigate the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Yuanyu Wan , Chang Yao , Yitao Ma , Mingli Song , Lijun Zhang