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We study online learning in constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) in which rewards and constraints may be either stochastic or adversarial. In such settings, Stradi et al.(2024) proposed the first best-of-both-worlds algorithm able…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Francesco Emanuele Stradi , Anna Lunghi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We study the kernelized bandit problem, that involves designing an adaptive strategy for querying a noisy zeroth-order-oracle to efficiently learn about the optimizer of an unknown function $f$ with a norm bounded by $M<\infty$ in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-15 Shubhanshu Shekhar , Tara Javidi

Conversational recommender systems proactively query users with relevant "key terms" and leverage the feedback to elicit users' preferences for personalized recommendations. Conversational contextual bandits, a prevalent approach in this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-28 Maoli Liu , Zhuohua Li , Xiangxiang Dai , John C. S. Lui

Bandit algorithms sequentially accumulate data using adaptive sampling policies, offering flexibility for real-world applications. However, excessive sampling can be costly, motivating the devolopment of early stopping methods and reliable…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-02-06 Zihan Cui

We consider model selection in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. Given a set of base learning algorithms, an effective model selection strategy adapts to the best learning algorithm in an online fashion. We show that by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Aldo Pacchiano , My Phan

Learning good interventions in a causal graph can be modelled as a stochastic multi-armed bandit problem with side-information. First, we study this problem when interventions are more expensive than observations and a budget is specified.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-15 Vineet Nair , Vishakha Patil , Gaurav Sinha

Sequential design of experiments for optimizing a reward function in causal systems can be effectively modeled by the sequential design of interventions in causal bandits (CBs). In the existing literature on CBs, a critical assumption is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-06 Zirui Yan , Arpan Mukherjee , Burak Varıcı , Ali Tajer

Off-policy evaluation (OPE) is the problem of estimating the value of a target policy from samples obtained via different policies. Recently, applying OPE methods for bandit problems has garnered attention. For the theoretical guarantees of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-26 Masahiro Kato , Kenshi Abe , Kaito Ariu , Shota Yasui

Classic no-regret multi-armed bandit algorithms, including the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB), Hedge, and EXP3, are inherently unfair by design. Their unfairness stems from their objective of playing the most rewarding arm as frequently as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-14 Abhishek Sinha

Recently, there has been rising interest in Bayesian optimization -- the optimization of an unknown function with assumptions usually expressed by a Gaussian Process (GP) prior. We study an optimization strategy that directly uses an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-08-14 Zi Wang , Bolei Zhou , Stefanie Jegelka

We consider a contextual version of multi-armed bandit problem with global knapsack constraints. In each round, the outcome of pulling an arm is a scalar reward and a resource consumption vector, both dependent on the context, and the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-07-12 Shipra Agrawal , Nikhil R. Devanur , Lihong Li

Contextual Bandits is one of the widely popular techniques used in applications such as personalization, recommendation systems, mobile health, causal marketing etc . As a dynamic approach, it can be more efficient than standard A/B testing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-03 Praneet Dutta , Joe Cheuk , Jonathan S Kim , Massimo Mascaro

This paper studies kernelized bandits (also known as Gaussian process bandits) in an adversarial environment, where the reward functions in a known reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) may be adversarially chosen at each round. We show…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Shogo Iwazaki

Recently, there has been extensive study of cooperative multi-agent multi-armed bandits where a set of distributed agents cooperatively play the same multi-armed bandit game. The goal is to develop bandit algorithms with the optimal group…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-09 Lin Yang , Xuchuang Wang , Mohammad Hajiesmaili , Lijun Zhang , John C. S. Lui , Don Towsley

We introduce \texttt{OPO-CMDP}, the first policy optimization algorithm for stochastic Contextual Markov Decision Process (CMDPs) under general offline function approximation. Our approach achieves a high probability regret bound of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Orin Levy , Aviv Rosenberg , Alon Cohen , Yishay Mansour

We consider the stochastic linear (multi-armed) contextual bandit problem with the possibility of hidden simple multi-armed bandit structure in which the rewards are independent of the contextual information. Algorithms that are designed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-07 Niladri S. Chatterji , Vidya Muthukumar , Peter L. Bartlett

Off-policy evaluation (OPE) attempts to predict the performance of counterfactual policies using log data from a different policy. We extend its applicability by developing an OPE method for a class of both full support and deficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Yusuke Narita , Kyohei Okumura , Akihiro Shimizu , Kohei Yata

This paper introduces a new principled approach for off-policy learning in contextual bandits. Unlike previous work, our approach does not derive learning principles from intractable or loose bounds. We analyse the problem through the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-05-30 Otmane Sakhi , Pierre Alquier , Nicolas Chopin

We consider sequential optimization of an unknown function in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. We propose a Gaussian process-based algorithm and establish its order-optimal regret performance (up to a poly-logarithmic factor). This is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-11-01 Sudeep Salgia , Sattar Vakili , Qing Zhao

This paper studies a non-stationary kernelized bandit (KB) problem, also called time-varying Bayesian optimization, where one seeks to minimize the regret under an unknown reward function that varies over time. In particular, we focus on a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-22 Shogo Iwazaki , Shion Takeno