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This paper addresses the problem of learning to sparsify stochastic linear bandits, where a decision-maker sequentially selects actions from a high-dimensional space subject to a sparsity constraint on the number of nonzero elements in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Zhengmiao Wang , Ming Chi , Zhi-Wei Liu , Lintao Ye , Carla Fabiana Chiasserini

We consider the problem of contextual bandits and imitation learning, where the learner lacks direct knowledge of the executed action's reward. Instead, the learner can actively query an expert at each round to compare two actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-25 Ayush Sekhari , Karthik Sridharan , Wen Sun , Runzhe Wu

Most contextual bandit algorithms minimize regret against the best fixed policy, a questionable benchmark for non-stationary environments that are ubiquitous in applications. In this work, we develop several efficient contextual bandit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-05 Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Alekh Agarwal , John Langford

We investigate the hardness of online reinforcement learning in fixed horizon, sparse linear Markov decision process (MDP), with a special focus on the high-dimensional regime where the ambient dimension is larger than the number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-11 Botao Hao , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvári , Mengdi Wang

Contextual sequential decision-making problems play a crucial role in machine learning, encompassing a wide range of downstream applications such as bandits, sequential hypothesis testing and online risk control. These applications often…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-31 Haichen Hu , Rui Ai , Stephen Bates , David Simchi-Levi

Personalized services are central to today's digital economy, and their sequential decisions are often modeled as contextual bandits. Modern applications pose two main challenges: high-dimensional covariates and the need for nonparametric…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-07 Wenjia Wang , Qingwen Zhang , Xiaowei Zhang

We consider the framework of non-stationary stochastic optimization [Besbes et al, 2015] with squared error losses and noisy gradient feedback where the dynamic regret of an online learner against a time varying comparator sequence is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-02 Dheeraj Baby , Yu-Xiang Wang

We consider a stochastic sparse linear bandit problem where only a sparse subset of context features affects the expected reward function, i.e., the unknown reward parameter has a sparse structure. In the existing Lasso bandit literature,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-04 Harin Lee , Taehyun Hwang , Min-hwan Oh

We study model selection in linear bandits, where the learner must adapt to the dimension (denoted by $d_\star$) of the smallest hypothesis class containing the true linear model while balancing exploration and exploitation. Previous papers…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-17 Yinglun Zhu , Robert Nowak

We study time-inhomogeneous episodic reinforcement learning (RL) under general function approximation and sparse rewards. We design a new algorithm, Variance-weighted Optimistic $Q$-Learning (VO$Q$L), based on $Q$-learning and bound its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-13 Alekh Agarwal , Yujia Jin , Tong Zhang

We consider the kernelized contextual bandit problem with a large feature space. This problem involves $K$ arms, and the goal of the forecaster is to maximize the cumulative rewards through learning the relationship between the contexts and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-21 Shogo Iwazaki , Junpei Komiyama , Masaaki Imaizumi

The deployment of Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) has become commonplace in many economic applications. However, regret guarantees for even state-of-the-art linear bandit algorithms (such as Optimism in the Face of Uncertainty Linear bandit…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-02-28 Jingwen Zhang , Yifang Chen , Amandeep Singh

Bandit convex optimization (BCO) is a fundamental online learning framework with partial feedback, where the learner observes only the loss incurred at the chosen decision point in each round. In this work, we investigate whether optimistic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Shuche Wang , Adarsh Barik , Vincent Y. F. Tan

In digital health and EdTech, recommendation systems face a significant challenge: users often choose impulsively, in ways that conflict with the platform's long-term payoffs. This misalignment makes it difficult to effectively learn to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Arpit Agarwal , Rad Niazadeh , Prathamesh Patil

We present a novel approach to address the multi-agent sparse contextual linear bandit problem, in which the feature vectors have a high dimension $d$ whereas the reward function depends on only a limited set of features - precisely $s_0…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-31 Haniyeh Barghi , Xiaotong Cheng , Setareh Maghsudi

The contextual combinatorial semi-bandit problem with linear payoff functions is a decision-making problem in which a learner chooses a set of arms with the feature vectors in each round under given constraints so as to maximize the sum of…

We investigate the high-dimensional sparse linear bandits problem in a data-poor regime where the time horizon is much smaller than the ambient dimension and number of arms. We study the setting under the additional blocking constraint…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-30 Adit Jain , Soumyabrata Pal , Sunav Choudhary , Ramasuri Narayanam , Harshita Chopra , Vikram Krishnamurthy

Bandit Convex Optimization (BCO) is a fundamental framework for modeling sequential decision-making with partial information, where the only feedback available to the player is the one-point or two-point function values. In this paper, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-07 Peng Zhao , Guanghui Wang , Lijun Zhang , Zhi-Hua Zhou

We study the benefits of sparsity in nonparametric contextual bandit problems, in which the set of candidate features is countably or uncountably infinite. Our contribution is two-fold. First, using a novel reduction to sequences of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-16 Hamish Flynn , Julia Olkhovskaya , Paul Rognon-Vael

In this paper we propose the multi-objective contextual bandit problem with similarity information. This problem extends the classical contextual bandit problem with similarity information by introducing multiple and possibly conflicting…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-13 Eralp Turğay , Doruk Öner , Cem Tekin