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We study the linear bandit problem that accounts for partially observable features. Without proper handling, unobserved features can lead to linear regret in the decision horizon $T$, as their influence on rewards is unknown. To tackle this…
We study reinforcement learning (RL) for the same class of continuous-time stochastic linear--quadratic (LQ) control problems as in \cite{huang2024sublinear}, where volatilities depend on both states and controls while states are…
We study fairness in linear bandit problems. Starting from the notion of meritocratic fairness introduced in Joseph et al. [2016], we carry out a more refined analysis of a more general problem, achieving better performance guarantees with…
We study regret minimization in a stochastic multi-armed bandit setting and establish a fundamental trade-off between the regret suffered under an algorithm, and its statistical robustness. Considering broad classes of underlying arms'…
In reinforcement learning, an agent interacts sequentially with an environment to maximize a reward, receiving only partial, probabilistic feedback. This creates a fundamental exploration-exploitation trade-off: the agent must explore to…
We study data corruption robustness for reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) in an offline setting. Given an offline dataset of pairs of trajectories along with feedback about human preferences, an $\varepsilon$-fraction of the…
Causal knowledge about the relationships among decision variables and a reward variable in a bandit setting can accelerate the learning of an optimal decision. Current works often assume the causal graph is known, which may not always be…
In this paper, we investigate the problem of \textit{episodic reinforcement learning} with quantum oracles for state evolution. To this end, we propose an \textit{Upper Confidence Bound} (UCB) based quantum algorithmic framework to…
In the stochastic contextual low-rank matrix bandit problem, the expected reward of an action is given by the inner product between the action's feature matrix and some fixed, but initially unknown $d_1$ by $d_2$ matrix $\Theta^*$ with rank…
We consider Contextual Bandits with Concave Rewards (CBCR), a multi-objective bandit problem where the desired trade-off between the rewards is defined by a known concave objective function, and the reward vector depends on an observed…
We propose stochastic rank-$1$ bandits, a class of online learning problems where at each step a learning agent chooses a pair of row and column arms, and receives the product of their values as a reward. The main challenge of the problem…
In this paper, we study the problem of stochastic linear bandits with finite action sets. Most of existing work assume the payoffs are bounded or sub-Gaussian, which may be violated in some scenarios such as financial markets. To settle…
We provide improved gap-dependent regret bounds for reinforcement learning in finite episodic Markov decision processes. Compared to prior work, our bounds depend on alternative definitions of gaps. These definitions are based on the…
In this paper, we investigate the impact of context diversity on stochastic linear contextual bandits. As opposed to the previous view that contexts lead to more difficult bandit learning, we show that when the contexts are sufficiently…
We investigate the problem of stochastic, combinatorial multi-armed bandits where the learner only has access to bandit feedback and the reward function can be non-linear. We provide a general framework for adapting discrete offline…
We study the $K$-armed contextual dueling bandit problem, a sequential decision making setting in which the learner uses contextual information to make two decisions, but only observes \emph{preference-based feedback} suggesting that one…
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 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 introduce a new stochastic smoothing perspective to study adversarial contextual bandit problems. We propose a general algorithm template that represents random perturbation based algorithms and identify several perturbation…
We consider reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) with linear function approximation under drifting environment. Specifically, both the reward and state transition functions can evolve over time but their…