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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…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-01-01 Wanteng Ma , T. Tony Cai

We consider the problem of online control of systems with time-varying linear dynamics. This is a general formulation that is motivated by the use of local linearization in control of nonlinear dynamical systems. To state meaningful…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Paula Gradu , Elad Hazan , Edgar Minasyan

We consider a reinforcement learning setting introduced in (Maillard et al., NIPS 2011) where the learner does not have explicit access to the states of the underlying Markov decision process (MDP). Instead, she has access to several models…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-09-16 Ronald Ortner , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Daniil Ryabko

We demonstrate that a wide array of machine learning algorithms are specific instances of one single paradigm: reciprocal learning. These instances range from active learning over multi-armed bandits to self-training. We show that all these…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-05 Julian Rodemann , Christoph Jansen , Georg Schollmeyer

In this paper, we propose and study opportunistic reinforcement learning - a new variant of reinforcement learning problems where the regret of selecting a suboptimal action varies under an external environmental condition known as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-26 Xiaoxiao Wang , Nader Bouacida , Xueying Guo , Xin Liu

A key challenge in online learning is that classical algorithms can be slow to adapt to changing environments. Recent studies have proposed "meta" algorithms that convert any online learning algorithm to one that is adaptive to changing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-08 Kwang-Sung Jun , Francesco Orabona , Stephen Wright , Rebecca Willett

Transformers have demonstrated exceptional performance across a wide range of domains. While their ability to perform reinforcement learning in-context has been established both theoretically and empirically, their behavior in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-24 Baiyuan Chen , Shinji Ito , Masaaki Imaizumi

In the incentivized exploration model, a principal aims to explore and learn over time by interacting with a sequence of self-interested agents. It has been recently understood that the main challenge in designing incentive-compatible…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Benjamin Schiffer , Mark Sellke

We study the Lipschitz bandit problem, where a learner sequentially maximizes an unknown Lipschitz function $f$ over a domain $\mathcal{X} \subset [0,1]^d$ using noisy pointwise evaluations. Existing regret bounds are either worst-case,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-29 Marius Potfer , Vianney Perchet

Reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic, factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs) is studied. We propose an algorithm called FMDP-BF, which leverages the factorization structure of FMDP. The regret of FMDP-BF is shown to be exponentially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-11 Xiaoyu Chen , Jiachen Hu , Lihong Li , Liwei Wang

Real-world applications of reinforcement learning often involve environments where agents operate on complex, high-dimensional observations, but the underlying (''latent'') dynamics are comparatively simple. However, outside of restrictive…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-24 Philip Amortila , Dylan J. Foster , Nan Jiang , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Zakaria Mhammedi

We consider the problem of reinforcement learning using function approximation, where the approximating basis can change dynamically while interacting with the environment. A motivation for such an approach is maximizing the value function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2010-05-04 Dotan Di Castro , Shie Mannor

We study minimax optimal reinforcement learning in episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs), which are MDPs with conditionally independent transition components. Assuming the factorization is known, we propose two model-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Yi Tian , Jian Qian , Suvrit Sra

We develop a general theory to optimize the frequentist regret for sequential learning problems, where efficient bandit and reinforcement learning algorithms can be derived from unified Bayesian principles. We propose a novel optimization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-12 Yunbei Xu , Assaf Zeevi

Consider a nonparametric contextual multi-arm bandit problem where each arm $a \in [K]$ is associated to a nonparametric reward function $f_a: [0,1] \to \mathbb{R}$ mapping from contexts to the expected reward. Suppose that there is a large…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-06 Nirandika Wanigasekara , Christina Lee Yu

The curse of dimensionality renders Reinforcement Learning (RL) impractical in many real-world settings with exponentially large state and action spaces. Yet, many environments exhibit exploitable structure that can accelerate learning. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Thomas van Vuren , Fiona Sloothaak , Maarten G. Wolf , Jaron Sanders

We study a regret minimization problem with the existence of multiple best/near-optimal arms in the multi-armed bandit setting. We consider the case when the number of arms/actions is comparable or much larger than the time horizon, and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-23 Yinglun Zhu , Robert Nowak

We study the problem of learning optimal behavior from sub-optimal datasets for goal-conditioned offline reinforcement learning under sparse rewards, invertible actions and deterministic transitions. To mitigate the effects of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Alfredo Reichlin , Miguel Vasco , Hang Yin , Danica Kragic

We study adversarial noisy bandits given a known function class $\mathcal{F}$. In each round, the adversary selects a function $f \in \mathcal{F}$, the learner chooses an arm, and then observes a noisy reward determined by the chosen arm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Steve Hanneke , Kun Wang

The adaptive learning capabilities seen in biological neural networks are largely a product of the self-modifying behavior emerging from online plastic changes in synaptic connectivity. Current methods in Reinforcement Learning (RL) only…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2020-06-16 Samuel Schmidgall