Related papers: Hyper-parameter Tuning for the Contextual Bandit

To address the contextual bandit problem, we propose an online random forest algorithm. The analysis of the proposed algorithm is based on the sample complexity needed to find the optimal decision stump. Then, the decision stumps are…

We consider a novel variant of the contextual bandit problem (i.e., the multi-armed bandit with side-information, or context, available to a decision-maker) where the context used at each decision may be corrupted ("useless context"). This…

We consider the contextual bandit problem where at each time, the agent only has access to a noisy version of the context and the error variance (or an estimator of this variance). This setting is motivated by a wide range of applications…

Most bandit policies are designed to either minimize regret in any problem instance, making very few assumptions about the underlying environment, or in a Bayesian sense, assuming a prior distribution over environment parameters. The former…

We study the contextual linear bandit problem, a version of the standard stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem where a learner sequentially selects actions to maximize a reward which depends also on a user provided per-round context.…

Multi-armed bandit problems are receiving a great deal of attention because they adequately formalize the exploration-exploitation trade-offs arising in several industrially relevant applications, such as online advertisement and, more…

We propose an extensible deep learning method that uses reinforcement learning to train neural networks for offline ranking in information retrieval (IR). We call our method BanditRank as it treats ranking as a contextual bandit problem. In…

Contextual multi-armed bandits (CMAB) have been widely used for learning to filter and prioritize information according to a user's interest. In this work, we analyze top-K ranking under the CMAB framework where the top-K arms are chosen…

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…

In linear contextual bandits, the objective is to select actions that maximize cumulative rewards, modeled as a linear function with unknown parameters. Although Thompson Sampling performs well empirically, it does not achieve optimal…

The standard contextual bandit framework assumes fully observable and actionable contexts. In this work, we consider a new bandit setting with partially observable, correlated contexts and linear payoffs, motivated by the applications in…

Recommender systems trained in a continuous learning fashion are plagued by the feedback loop problem, also known as algorithmic bias. This causes a newly trained model to act greedily and favor items that have already been engaged by…

We study the fundamental limits of learning in contextual bandits, where a learner's rewards depend on their actions and a known context, which extends the canonical multi-armed bandit to the case where side-information is available. We are…

Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) algorithms are widely used in recommender systems that require continuous, incremental learning. A core aspect of MABs is the exploration-exploitation trade-off: choosing between exploiting items likely to be…

We propose online algorithms for sequential learning in the contextual multi-armed bandit setting. Our approach is to partition the context space and then optimally combine all of the possible mappings between the partition regions and the…

In today's technology environment, information is abundant, dynamic, and heterogeneous in nature. Automated filtering and prioritization of information is based on the distinction between whether the information adds substantial value…

Most modern systems strive to learn from interactions with users, and many engage in exploration: making potentially suboptimal choices for the sake of acquiring new information. We initiate a study of the interplay between exploration and…

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…

Real-world applications of contextual bandits often exhibit non-stationarity due to seasonality, serendipity, and evolving social trends. While a number of non-stationary contextual bandit learning algorithms have been proposed in the…

We consider the contextual bandit problem on general action and context spaces, where the learner's rewards depend on their selected actions and an observable context. This generalizes the standard multi-armed bandit to the case where side…