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Related papers: Regret Bounds for Thompson Sampling in Episodic Re…

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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

We consider sequential decision making in a setting where regret is measured with respect to a set of stateful reference policies, and feedback is limited to observing the rewards of the actions performed (the so called "bandit" setting).…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-07-30 Uriel Feige , Tomer Koren , Moshe Tennenholtz

A common challenge for decision makers is selecting actions whose rewards are unknown and evolve over time based on prior policies. For instance, repeated use may reduce an action's effectiveness (habituation), while inactivity may restore…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-06 Fengxu Li , Stephanie M. Carpenter , Matthew P. Buman , Yonatan Mintz

We here adopt Bayesian nonparametric mixture models to extend multi-armed bandits in general, and Thompson sampling in particular, to scenarios where there is reward model uncertainty. In the stochastic multi-armed bandit, the reward for…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-26 Iñigo Urteaga , Chris H. Wiggins

Multi-armed bandits (MAB) model sequential decision making problems, in which a learner sequentially chooses arms with unknown reward distributions in order to maximize its cumulative reward. Most of the prior work on MAB assumes that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-03-22 Onur Atan , Cem Tekin , Mihaela van der Schaar

We study a regret minimization problem with the existence of multiple best/near-optimal arms in the multi-armed bandit setting. We consider the case when the number of arms/actions is comparable or much larger than the time horizon, and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-23 Yinglun Zhu , Robert Nowak

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

Contextual bandits are canonical models for sequential decision-making under uncertainty in environments with time-varying components. In this setting, the expected reward of each bandit arm consists of the inner product of an unknown…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-27 Hongju Park , Mohamad Kazem Shirani Faradonbeh

The design and performance analysis of bandit algorithms in the presence of stage-wise safety or reliability constraints has recently garnered significant interest. In this work, we consider the linear stochastic bandit problem under…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-03 Ahmadreza Moradipari , Sanae Amani , Mahnoosh Alizadeh , Christos Thrampoulidis

We study the problem of nonstochastic bandits with expert advice, extending the setting from finitely many experts to any countably infinite set: A learner aims to maximize the total reward by taking actions sequentially based on bandit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-29 X. Flora Meng , Tuhin Sarkar , Munther A. Dahleh

In this paper, we prove the first Bayesian regret bounds for Thompson Sampling in reinforcement learning in a multitude of settings. We simplify the learning problem using a discrete set of surrogate environments, and present a refined…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-08 Ahmadreza Moradipari , Mohammad Pedramfar , Modjtaba Shokrian Zini , Vaneet Aggarwal

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

We consider a special case of bandit problems, named batched bandits, in which an agent observes batches of responses over a certain time period. Unlike previous work, we consider a more practically relevant batch-centric scenario of batch…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-04 Danil Provodin , Pratik Gajane , Mykola Pechenizkiy , Maurits Kaptein

In this paper, we consider a best action identification problem in the stochastic linear bandit setup with a fixed confident constraint. In the considered best action identification problem, instead of minimizing the accumulative regret as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-04 Jun Geng , Lifeng Lai

This paper investigates the problem of non-stationary linear bandits, where the unknown regression parameter is evolving over time. Existing studies develop various algorithms and show that they enjoy an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-23 Peng Zhao , Lijun Zhang , Yuan Jiang , Zhi-Hua Zhou

Information-theoretic Bayesian regret bounds of Russo and Van Roy capture the dependence of regret on prior uncertainty. However, this dependence is through entropy, which can become arbitrarily large as the number of actions increases. We…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-09 Shi Dong , Benjamin Van Roy

Thompson Sampling is one of the most effective methods for contextual bandits and has been generalized to posterior sampling for certain MDP settings. However, existing posterior sampling methods for reinforcement learning are limited by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-24 Christoph Dann , Mehryar Mohri , Tong Zhang , Julian Zimmert

We consider the infinite-horizon, average-reward restless bandit problem in discrete time. We propose a new class of policies that are designed to drive a progressively larger subset of arms toward the optimal distribution. We show that our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Yige Hong , Qiaomin Xie , Yudong Chen , Weina Wang

Algorithms for hyperparameter optimization abound, all of which work well under different and often unverifiable assumptions. Motivated by the general challenge of sequentially choosing which algorithm to use, we study the more specific…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-04-12 Robert Nishihara , David Lopez-Paz , Léon Bottou

We study stochastic linear optimization problem with bandit feedback. The set of arms take values in an $N$-dimensional space and belong to a bounded polyhedron described by finitely many linear inequalities. We provide a lower bound for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-09-29 Manjesh K. Hanawal , Amir Leshem , Venkatesh Saligrama