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Related papers: Thompson Sampling with Approximate Inference

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We consider incentivized exploration: a version of multi-armed bandits where the choice of arms is controlled by self-interested agents, and the algorithm can only issue recommendations. The algorithm controls the flow of information, and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Mark Sellke , Aleksandrs Slivkins

Contextual multi-armed bandits are classical models in reinforcement learning for sequential decision-making associated with individual information. A widely-used policy for bandits is Thompson Sampling, where samples from a data-driven…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-11-30 Hongju Park , Mohamad Kazem Shirani Faradonbeh

We present a novel extension of Thompson Sampling for stochastic sequential decision problems with graph feedback, even when the graph structure itself is unknown and/or changing. We provide theoretical guarantees on the Bayesian regret of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-01-17 Aristide C. Y. Tossou , Christos Dimitrakakis , Devdatt Dubhashi

We consider stochastic multi-armed bandit problems with complex actions over a set of basic arms, where the decision maker plays a complex action rather than a basic arm in each round. The reward of the complex action is some function of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-11-05 Aditya Gopalan , Shie Mannor , Yishay Mansour

Ensemble sampling serves as a practical approximation to Thompson sampling when maintaining an exact posterior distribution over model parameters is computationally intractable. In this paper, we establish a regret bound that ensures…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-02 Chao Qin , Zheng Wen , Xiuyuan Lu , Benjamin Van Roy

Thompson Sampling is one of the oldest heuristics for multi-armed bandit problems. It is a randomized algorithm based on Bayesian ideas, and has recently generated significant interest after several studies demonstrated it to have better…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-09-18 Shipra Agrawal , Navin Goyal

Thompson sampling (TS) is one of the most popular and earliest algorithms to solve stochastic multi-armed bandit problems. We consider a variant of TS, named $\alpha$-TS, where we use a fractional or $\alpha$-posterior ($\alpha\in(0,1)$)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-09-13 Prateek Jaiswal , Debdeep Pati , Anirban Bhattacharya , Bani K. Mallick

Most bandit algorithms assume that the reward variances or their upper bounds are known, and that they are the same for all arms. This naturally leads to suboptimal performance and higher regret due to variance overestimation. On the other…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-13 Aadirupa Saha , Branislav Kveton

In this paper, we propose a Thompson Sampling algorithm for \emph{unimodal} bandits, where the expected reward is unimodal over the partially ordered arms. To exploit the unimodal structure better, at each step, instead of exploration from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-17 Long Yang , Zhao Li , Zehong Hu , Shasha Ruan , Shijian Li , Gang Pan , Hongyang Chen

Thompson Sampling, one of the oldest heuristics for solving multi-armed bandits, has recently been shown to demonstrate state-of-the-art performance. The empirical success has led to great interests in theoretical understanding of this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-10-29 Lihong Li

We consider the problem of statistical inference when the data is collected via a Thompson Sampling-type algorithm. While Thompson Sampling (TS) is known to be both asymptotically optimal and empirically effective, its adaptive sampling…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-17 Budhaditya Halder , Shubhayan Pan , Koulik Khamaru

Thompson Sampling is one of the oldest heuristics for multi-armed bandit problems. It is a randomized algorithm based on Bayesian ideas, and has recently generated significant interest after several studies demonstrated it to have better…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-02-04 Shipra Agrawal , Navin Goyal

Thompson sampling has become a ubiquitous approach to online decision problems with bandit feedback. The key algorithmic task for Thompson sampling is drawing a sample from the posterior of the optimal action. We propose an alternative arm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-05 Jackie Baek , Vivek F. Farias

We address online combinatorial optimization when the player has a prior over the adversary's sequence of losses. In this framework, Russo and Van Roy proposed an information-theoretic analysis of Thompson Sampling based on the information…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-05 Sébastien Bubeck , Mark Sellke

We consider Thompson Sampling (TS) for linear combinatorial semi-bandits and subgaussian rewards. We propose the first known TS whose finite-time regret does not scale exponentially with the dimension of the problem. We further show the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-10 Raymond Zhang , Richard Combes

We introduce a novel anytime Batched Thompson sampling policy for multi-armed bandits where the agent observes the rewards of her actions and adjusts her policy only at the end of a small number of batches. We show that this policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-04 Cem Kalkanli , Ayfer Ozgur

Thompson sampling is one of the most widely used algorithms for many online decision problems, due to its simplicity in implementation and superior empirical performance over other state-of-the-art methods. Despite its popularity and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-02 Tianyuan Jin , Pan Xu , Jieming Shi , Xiaokui Xiao , Quanquan Gu

Recommender systems exemplify sequential decision-making under uncertainty, strategically deciding what content to serve to users, to optimise a range of potential objectives. To balance the explore-exploit trade-off successfully, Thompson…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2025-07-09 Olivier Jeunen

We consider a sequential subset selection problem under parameter uncertainty, where at each time step, the decision maker selects a subset of cardinality $K$ from $N$ possible items (arms), and observes a (bandit) feedback in the form of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-07 Shipra Agrawal , Vashist Avadhanula , Vineet Goyal , Assaf Zeevi

We consider the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem, where an agent sequentially chooses actions and observes rewards for the actions it took. While the majority of algorithms try to minimize the regret, i.e., the cumulative difference between…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-14 Nadav Merlis , Shie Mannor