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Sequential decision-making under uncertainty is often associated with long feedback delays. Such delays degrade the performance of the learning agent in identifying a subset of arms with the optimal collective reward in the long run. This…
This paper studies semiparametric contextual bandits, a generalization of the linear stochastic bandit problem where the reward for an action is modeled as a linear function of known action features confounded by an non-linear…
This thesis considers sequential decision problems, where the loss/reward incurred by selecting an action may not be inferred from observed feedback. A major part of this thesis focuses on the unsupervised sequential selection problem,…
We consider the problem where M agents collaboratively interact with an instance of a stochastic K-armed contextual bandit, where K>>M. The goal of the agents is to simultaneously minimize the cumulative regret over all the agents over a…
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…
There has been a growing interest in covariate adjustment in the analysis of randomized controlled trials in past years. For instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently issued guidance that emphasizes the importance of…
Contextual bandits have become popular as they offer a middle ground between very simple approaches based on multi-armed bandits and very complex approaches using the full power of reinforcement learning. They have demonstrated success in…
We define and analyze a multi-agent multi-armed bandit problem in which decision-making agents can observe the choices and rewards of their neighbors. Neighbors are defined by a network graph with heterogeneous and stochastic…
In multi-armed bandit problems, the typical goal is to identify the arm with the highest reward. This paper explores a threshold-based bandit problem, aiming to select an arm based on its relation to a prescribed threshold \(\tau \). We…
Contextual bandit learning is a reinforcement learning problem where the learner repeatedly receives a set of features (context), takes an action and receives a reward based on the action and context. We consider this problem under a…
Motivated by online recommendation systems, we propose the problem of finding the optimal policy in multitask contextual bandits when a small fraction $\alpha < 1/2$ of tasks (users) are arbitrary and adversarial. The remaining fraction of…
Consider a situation with two treatments, the first of which is randomized but the second is not, and the multifactor version of this. Interest is in treatment effects, defined using standard factorial notation. We define estimators for the…
Motivated by problems in search and detection we present a solution to a Combinatorial Multi-Armed Bandit (CMAB) problem with both heavy-tailed reward distributions and a new class of feedback, filtered semibandit feedback. In a CMAB…
Multi-armed bandit problems are the most basic examples of sequential decision problems with an exploration-exploitation trade-off. This is the balance between staying with the option that gave highest payoffs in the past and exploring new…
We consider a stochastic multi-armed bandit setting where reward must be actively queried for it to be observed. We provide tight lower and upper problem-dependent guarantees on both the regret and the number of queries. Interestingly, we…
Bandit optimization usually refers to the class of online optimization problems with limited feedback, namely, a decision maker uses only the objective value at the current point to make a new decision and does not have access to the…
Interference occurs when the potential outcomes of a unit depend on the treatment of others. Interference can be highly heterogeneous, where treating certain individuals might have a larger effect on the population's overall outcome. A…
This study investigates the problem of $K$-armed linear contextual bandits, an instance of the multi-armed bandit problem, under an adversarial corruption. At each round, a decision-maker observes an independent and identically distributed…
We consider function optimization as a sequential decision making problem under budget constraint. This constraint limits the number of objective function evaluations allowed during the optimization. We consider an algorithm inspired by a…
Evaluating the causal impacts of possible interventions is crucial for informing decision-making, especially towards improving access to opportunity. However, if causal effects are heterogeneous and predictable from covariates, personalized…