Related papers: Beyond UCB: Optimal and Efficient Contextual Bandi…

Nonparametric contextual bandit is an important model of sequential decision making problems. Under $\alpha$-Tsybakov margin condition, existing research has established a regret bound of $\tilde{O}\left(T^{1-\frac{\alpha+1}{d+2}}\right)$…

What is the most statistically efficient way to do off-policy evaluation and optimization with batch data from bandit feedback? For log data generated by contextual bandit algorithms, we consider offline estimators for the expected reward…

By leveraging the representation power of deep neural networks, neural upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithms have shown success in contextual bandits. To further balance the exploration and exploitation, we propose…

In stochastic contextual bandits, an agent sequentially makes actions from a time-dependent action set based on past experience to minimize the cumulative regret. Like many other machine learning algorithms, the performance of bandits…

We study contextual bandits in the presence of a stage-wise constraint when the constraint must be satisfied both with high probability and in expectation. We start with the linear case where both the reward function and the stage-wise…

In statistical learning, algorithms for model selection allow the learner to adapt to the complexity of the best hypothesis class in a sequence. We ask whether similar guarantees are possible for contextual bandit learning.

We present the first high-probability optimal regret bound for a policy optimization technique applied to the problem of stochastic contextual multi-armed bandit (CMAB) with general offline function approximation. Our algorithm is both…

Contextual bandits are a central framework for sequential decision-making, with applications ranging from recommendation systems to clinical trials. While nonparametric methods can flexibly model complex reward structures, they suffer from…

Contextual bandit algorithms are increasingly replacing non-adaptive A/B tests in e-commerce, healthcare, and policymaking because they can both improve outcomes for study participants and increase the chance of identifying good or even…

The contextual multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is crucial in sequential decision-making. A line of research, known as online clustering of bandits, extends contextual MAB by grouping similar users into clusters, utilizing shared features…

This paper extends the Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) approach for offline contextual bandits. Specifically, we leverage this framework to introduce a convex reformulation of the Counterfactual Risk Minimization principle.…

We consider online convex optimization with a zero-order oracle feedback. In particular, the decision maker does not know the explicit representation of the time-varying cost functions, or their gradients. At each time step, she observes…

We present efficient algorithms for the problem of contextual bandits with i.i.d. covariates, an arbitrary sequence of rewards, and an arbitrary class of policies. Our algorithm BISTRO requires d calls to the empirical risk minimization…

Reward-biased maximum likelihood estimation (RBMLE) is a classic principle in the adaptive control literature for tackling explore-exploit trade-offs. This paper studies the stochastic contextual bandit problem with general bounded reward…

We consider the linear contextual bandit problem with resource consumption, in addition to reward generation. In each round, the outcome of pulling an arm is a reward as well as a vector of resource consumptions. The expected values of…

Recent results in supervised learning suggest that while overparameterized models have the capacity to overfit, they in fact generalize quite well. We ask whether the same phenomenon occurs for offline contextual bandits. Our results are…

We study a nonparametric contextual bandit problem where the expected reward functions belong to a H\"older class with smoothness parameter $\beta$. We show how this interpolates between two extremes that were previously studied in…

We propose feature perturbation, a simple yet effective exploration strategy for contextual bandits that injects randomness directly into feature inputs, instead of randomizing unknown parameters or adding noise to rewards. Remarkably, this…

Contextual bandit with linear reward functions is among one of the most extensively studied models in bandit and online learning research. Recently, there has been increasing interest in designing \emph{locally private} linear contextual…

We study contextual linear bandit problems under feature uncertainty, where the features are noisy and have missing entries. To address the challenges posed by this noise, we analyze Bayesian oracles given the observed noisy features. Our…