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Related papers: Contextual Bandits with Side-Observations

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In this paper, we consider the contextual variant of the MNL-Bandit problem. More specifically, we consider a dynamic set optimization problem, where a decision-maker offers a subset (assortment) of products to a consumer and observes the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Priyank Agrawal , Theja Tulabandhula , Vashist Avadhanula

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

Multi-armed bandit problems are the predominant theoretical model of exploration-exploitation tradeoffs in learning, and they have countless applications ranging from medical trials, to communication networks, to Web search and advertising.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-09-06 Ashwinkumar Badanidiyuru , Robert Kleinberg , Aleksandrs Slivkins

We address online linear optimization problems when the possible actions of the decision maker are represented by binary vectors. The regret of the decision maker is the difference between her realized loss and the best loss she would have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-04-02 Jean-Yves Audibert , Sébastien Bubeck , Gábor Lugosi

Linear bandits have a wide variety of applications including recommendation systems yet they make one strong assumption: the algorithms must know an upper bound $S$ on the norm of the unknown parameter $\theta^*$ that governs the reward…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-04 Spencer , Gales , Sunder Sethuraman , Kwang-Sung Jun

We study the linear bandit problem that accounts for partially observable features. Without proper handling, unobserved features can lead to linear regret in the decision horizon $T$, as their influence on rewards is unknown. To tackle this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-19 Wonyoung Kim , Sungwoo Park , Garud Iyengar , Assaf Zeevi , Min-hwan Oh

We study the problem of expert advice under partial bandit feedback setting and create a sequential minimax optimal algorithm. Our algorithm works with a more general partial monitoring setting, where, in contrast to the classical bandit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-15 Kaan Gokcesu , Hakan Gokcesu

We consider the well-studied dueling bandit problem, where a learner aims to identify near-optimal actions using pairwise comparisons, under the constraint of differential privacy. We consider a general class of utility-based preference…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-25 Aadirupa Saha , Hilal Asi

We study the problem of learning 'good' interventions in a stochastic environment modeled by its underlying causal graph. Good interventions refer to interventions that maximize rewards. Specifically, we consider the setting of a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Fateme Jamshidi , Jalal Etesami , Negar Kiyavash

Collaborative bandit learning, i.e., bandit algorithms that utilize collaborative filtering techniques to improve sample efficiency in online interactive recommendation, has attracted much research attention as it enjoys the best of both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-16 Chuanhao Li , Qingyun Wu , Hongning Wang

Contextual multi-armed bandits provide powerful tools to solve the exploitation-exploration dilemma in decision making, with direct applications in the personalized recommendation. In fact, collaborative effects among users carry the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-24 Yikun Ban , Yunzhe Qi , Tianxin Wei , Jingrui He

Motivated by modern applications, such as online advertisement and recommender systems, we study the top-$k$ extreme contextual bandits problem, where the total number of arms can be enormous, and the learner is allowed to select $k$ arms…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-17 Rajat Sen , Alexander Rakhlin , Lexing Ying , Rahul Kidambi , Dean Foster , Daniel Hill , Inderjit Dhillon

Contextual bandits serve as a fundamental algorithmic framework for optimizing recommendation decisions online. Though extensive attention has been paid to tailoring contextual bandits for recommendation applications, the "herding effects"…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-29 Luyue Xu , Liming Wang , Hong Xie , Mingqiang Zhou

In this paper, we address the contextual dueling bandit problem by proposing variance-aware algorithms that leverage neural networks to approximate nonlinear utility functions. Our approach employs a \textit{variance-aware exploration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Youngmin Oh , Jinje Park , Taejin Paik , Jaemin Park

We propose the first regret-based approach to the Graphical Bilinear Bandits problem, where $n$ agents in a graph play a stochastic bilinear bandit game with each of their neighbors. This setting reveals a combinatorial NP-hard problem that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-13 Geovani Rizk , Igor Colin , Albert Thomas , Rida Laraki , Yann Chevaleyre

This paper addresses the critical challenge of stochastic latent heterogeneity in online decision-making, where individuals' responses to actions vary not only with observable contexts but also with unobserved, randomly realized subgroups.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-17 Elynn Chen , Xi Chen , Wenbo Jing , Xiao Liu

We consider a multi-armed bandit problem where payoffs are a linear function of an observed stochastic contextual variable. In the scenario where there exists a gap between optimal and suboptimal rewards, several algorithms have been…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-07-08 José Bento , Stratis Ioannidis , S. Muthukrishnan , Jinyun Yan

We consider the problem of designing contextual bandit algorithms in the ``cross-learning'' setting of Balseiro et al., where the learner observes the loss for the action they play in all possible contexts, not just the context of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-04 Jon Schneider , Julian Zimmert

We introduce efficient algorithms which achieve nearly optimal regrets for the problem of stochastic online shortest path routing with end-to-end feedback. The setting is a natural application of the combinatorial stochastic bandits…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-20 Ruihao Zhu , Eytan Modiano

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Chanakya Varude , Jay Chaudhary , Siddharth Kaushik , Prasanna Chaporkar