Related papers: Bridging the gap between regret minimization and b…
We consider stochastic multi-armed bandits where the expected reward is a unimodal function over partially ordered arms. This important class of problems has been recently investigated in (Cope 2009, Yu 2011). The set of arms is either…
This paper considers the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem and provides a new best-of-both-worlds (BOBW) algorithm that works nearly optimally in both stochastic and adversarial settings. In stochastic settings, some existing BOBW algorithms…
The theory of reinforcement learning has focused on two fundamental problems: achieving low regret, and identifying $\epsilon$-optimal policies. While a simple reduction allows one to apply a low-regret algorithm to obtain an…
In this paper, we consider the multi-armed bandit problem with high-dimensional features. First, we prove a minimax lower bound, $\mathcal{O}\big((\log d)^{\frac{\alpha+1}{2}}T^{\frac{1-\alpha}{2}}+\log T\big)$, for the cumulative regret,…
We consider the best arm identification problem, where the goal is to identify the arm with the highest mean reward from a set of $K$ arms under a limited sampling budget. This problem models many practical scenarios such as A/B testing. We…
Best arm identification (BAI) aims to identify the highest-performance arm among a set of $K$ arms by collecting stochastic samples from each arm. In real-world problems, the best arm needs to satisfy additional feasibility constraints.…
A matching platform is a system that matches different types of participants, such as companies and job-seekers. In such a platform, merely maximizing the number of matches can result in matches being concentrated on highly popular…
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…
We revisit the problem of online learning with sleeping experts/bandits: in each time step, only a subset of the actions are available for the algorithm to choose from (and learn about). The work of Kleinberg et al. (2010) showed that there…
We consider the classic problem of $(\epsilon,\delta)$-PAC learning a best arm where the goal is to identify with confidence $1-\delta$ an arm whose mean is an $\epsilon$-approximation to that of the highest mean arm in a multi-armed bandit…
Continuously learning and leveraging the knowledge accumulated from prior tasks in order to improve future performance is a long standing machine learning problem. In this paper, we study the problem in the multi-armed bandit framework with…
We consider the query recommendation problem in closed loop interactive learning settings like online information gathering and exploratory analytics. The problem can be naturally modelled using the Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) framework with…
The paper proposes a novel upper confidence bound (UCB) procedure for identifying the arm with the largest mean in a multi-armed bandit game in the fixed confidence setting using a small number of total samples. The procedure cannot be…
Online strategic classification studies settings in which agents strategically modify their features to obtain favorable predictions. For example, given a classifier that determines loan approval based on credit scores, applicants may open…
Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) method is arguably the most celebrated one used in online decision making with partial information feedback. Existing techniques for constructing confidence bounds are typically built upon various concentration…
Learning with expert advice and multi-armed bandit are two classic online decision problems which differ on how the information is observed in each round of the game. We study a family of problems interpolating the two. For a vector…
In this paper, we study the behavior of the Upper Confidence Bound-Variance (UCB-V) algorithm for the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problems, a variant of the canonical Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithm that incorporates variance estimates…
We consider the problem of online learning where the sequence of actions played by the learner must adhere to an unknown safety constraint at every round. The goal is to minimize regret with respect to the best safe action in hindsight…
We consider the setting of iterative learning control, or model-based policy learning in the presence of uncertain, time-varying dynamics. In this setting, we propose a new performance metric, planning regret, which replaces the standard…
Statistical performance bounds for reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can be critical for high-stakes applications like healthcare. This paper introduces a new framework for theoretically measuring the performance of such algorithms…