Related papers: Variable Selection via Thompson Sampling
We consider the problem of statistical inference when the data is collected via a Thompson Sampling-type algorithm. While Thompson Sampling (TS) is known to be both asymptotically optimal and empirically effective, its adaptive sampling…
We consider the Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem, where an agent sequentially chooses actions and observes rewards for the actions it took. While the majority of algorithms try to minimize the regret, i.e., the cumulative difference between…
We consider a sequential subset selection problem under parameter uncertainty, where at each time step, the decision maker selects a subset of cardinality $K$ from $N$ possible items (arms), and observes a (bandit) feedback in the form of…
Mobile health (mHealth) programs face a critical challenge in optimizing the timing of automated health information calls to beneficiaries. This challenge has been formulated as a collaborative multi-armed bandit problem, requiring online…
We study the use of policy gradient algorithms to optimize over a class of generalized Thompson sampling policies. Our central insight is to view the posterior parameter sampled by Thompson sampling as a kind of pseudo-action. Policy…
Bayesian optimization through Gaussian process regression is an effective method of optimizing an unknown function for which every measurement is expensive. It approximates the objective function and then recommends a new measurement point…
Most bandit algorithms assume that the reward variances or their upper bounds are known, and that they are the same for all arms. This naturally leads to suboptimal performance and higher regret due to variance overestimation. On the other…
In evolutionary computation, different reproduction operators have various search dynamics. To strike a well balance between exploration and exploitation, it is attractive to have an adaptive operator selection (AOS) mechanism that…
Non-stationary multi-armed bandits (NS-MABs) model sequential decision-making problems in which the expected rewards of a set of actions, a.k.a.~arms, evolve over time. In this paper, we fill a gap in the literature by providing a novel…
Taking advantage of contextual information can potentially boost the performance of recommender systems. In the era of big data, such side information often has several dimensions. Thus, developing decision-making algorithms to cope with…
In this note, we introduce a general version of the well-known elliptical potential lemma that is a widely used technique in the analysis of algorithms in sequential learning and decision-making problems. We consider a stochastic linear…
Dynamic decision-making under model uncertainty is central to many economic environments, yet existing bandit and reinforcement learning algorithms rely on the assumption of correct model specification. This paper studies the behavior and…
We consider the multiarm bandit problems in the timevarying dynamic system for rich structural features. For the nonlinear dynamic model, we propose the approximate inference for the posterior distributions based on Laplace Approximation.…
Bayesian optimization (BO) has become a powerful tool for solving simulation-based engineering optimization problems thanks to its ability to integrate physical and mathematical understandings, consider uncertainty, and address the…
The multi-armed bandit (MAB) model is one of the most classical models to study decision-making in an uncertain environment. In this model, a player chooses one of $K$ possible arms of a bandit machine to play at each time step, where the…
Online decision-making can be formulated as the popular stochastic multi-armed bandit problem where a learner makes decisions (or takes actions) to maximize cumulative rewards collected from an unknown environment. This paper proposes to…
Contextual bandits are a core technology for personalized mobile health interventions, where decision-making requires adapting to complex, non-linear user behaviors. While Thompson Sampling (TS) is a preferred strategy for these problems,…
We consider applying multi-armed bandits to model-assisted designs for dose-finding clinical trials. Multi-armed bandits are very simple and powerful methods to determine actions to maximize a reward in a limited number of trials. Among the…
Thompson Sampling (TS) has attracted a lot of interest due to its good empirical performance, in particular in the computational advertising. Though successful, the tools for its performance analysis appeared only recently. In this paper,…
Many stochastic optimization algorithms work by estimating the gradient of the cost function on the fly by sampling datapoints uniformly at random from a training set. However, the estimator might have a large variance, which inadvertently…