Related papers: On averaging the best samples in evolutionary comp…
In practical applications, data is used to make decisions in two steps: estimation and optimization. First, a machine learning model estimates parameters for a structural model relating decisions to outcomes. Second, a decision is chosen to…
Consider the classical problem of predicting the next bit in a sequence of bits. A standard performance measure is {\em regret} (loss in payoff) with respect to a set of experts. For example if we measure performance with respect to two…
We study online assortment optimization under stochastic choice when a decision maker simultaneously values cumulative revenue performance and the quality of post-hoc inference on revenue contrasts. We analyze a forced-exploration…
We consider the classic problem of online convex optimisation. Whereas the notion of static regret is relevant for stationary problems, the notion of switching regret is more appropriate for non-stationary problems. A switching regret is…
The OneMax problem, alternatively known as the Hamming distance problem, is often referred to as the "drosophila of evolutionary computation (EC)", because of its high relevance in theoretical and empirical analyses of EC approaches. It is…
In the classic expert problem, $\Phi$-regret measures the gap between the learner's total loss and that achieved by applying the best action transformation $\phi \in \Phi$. A recent work by Lu et al., [2025] introduces an adaptive algorithm…
We analyze the performance of the 2-rate $(1+\lambda)$ Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) with self-adjusting mutation rate control, its 3-rate counterpart, and a $(1+\lambda)$~EA variant using multiplicative update rules on the OneMax problem. We…
An important question in evolutionary computation is how good solutions evolutionary algorithms can produce. This paper aims to provide an analytic analysis of solution quality in terms of the relative approximation error, which is defined…
We provide consistent random algorithms for sequential decision under partial monitoring, i.e. when the decision maker does not observe the outcomes but receives instead random feedback signals. Those algorithms have no internal regret in…
We propose a simple model selection approach for algorithms in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. As opposed to prior work that (implicitly) assumes knowledge of the optimal regret, we only require that each base…
Regret is the cost of uncertainty in algorithmic decision-making. Quantifying regret typically requires computationally expensive simulation via Sample Average Approximation (SAA), with complexity $\mathcal{O}(Bn^{2}d^{3})$ in the number of…
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…
Some of the most compelling applications of online convex optimization, including online prediction and classification, are unconstrained: the natural feasible set is R^n. Existing algorithms fail to achieve sub-linear regret in this…
A central issue lying at the heart of online reinforcement learning (RL) is data efficiency. While a number of recent works achieved asymptotically minimal regret in online RL, the optimality of these results is only guaranteed in a…
This paper describes an efficient reduction of the learning problem of ranking to binary classification. The reduction guarantees an average pairwise misranking regret of at most that of the binary classifier regret, improving a recent…
We derive an alternative proof for the regret of Thompson sampling (\ts) in the stochastic linear bandit setting. While we obtain a regret bound of order $\widetilde{O}(d^{3/2}\sqrt{T})$ as in previous results, the proof sheds new light on…
We consider a basic problem at the interface of two fundamental fields: submodular optimization and online learning. In the online unconstrained submodular maximization (online USM) problem, there is a universe $[n]=\{1,2,...,n\}$ and a…
Running machine learning algorithms on large and rapidly growing volumes of data is often computationally expensive, one common trick to reduce the size of a data set, and thus reduce the computational cost of machine learning algorithms,…
We propose and analyze a self-adaptive version of the $(1,\lambda)$ evolutionary algorithm in which the current mutation rate is part of the individual and thus also subject to mutation. A rigorous runtime analysis on the OneMax benchmark…
This paper considers the stability of online learning algorithms and its implications for learnability (bounded regret). We introduce a novel quantity called {\em forward regret} that intuitively measures how good an online learning…