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We consider the stochastic contextual bandit problem under the high dimensional linear model. We focus on the case where the action space is finite and random, with each action associated with a randomly generated contextual covariate. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-09-07 Yining Wang , Yi Chen , Ethan X. Fang , Zhaoran Wang , Runze Li

We study the linear stochastic bandit problem, relaxing the standard i.i.d. assumption on the observation noise. As an alternative to this restrictive assumption, we allow the noise terms across rounds to be sub-Gaussian but interdependent,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-28 Baptiste Abélès , Eugenio Clerico , Hamish Flynn , Gergely Neu

Thompson sampling has been shown to be an effective policy across a variety of online learning tasks. Many works have analyzed the finite time performance of Thompson sampling, and proved that it achieves a sub-linear regret under a broad…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-10 Cem Kalkanli , Ayfer Ozgur

The population $\mathrm{KL}_{\inf}$ is a fundamental quantity that appears in lower bounds for (asymptotically) optimal regret of pure-exploration stochastic bandit algorithms, and optimal stopping time of sequential tests. Motivated by…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-02-06 Ashwin Ram , Aaditya Ramdas

This paper is motivated by recent research in the $d$-dimensional stochastic linear bandit literature, which has revealed an unsettling discrepancy: algorithms like Thompson sampling and Greedy demonstrate promising empirical performance,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Yuwei Luo , Mohsen Bayati

We consider a Bayesian budgeted multi-armed bandit problem, in which each arm consumes a different amount of resources when selected and there is a budget constraint on the total amount of resources that can be used. Budgeted Thompson…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-29 Woojin Jeong , Seungki Min

We consider the stochastic linear (multi-armed) contextual bandit problem with the possibility of hidden simple multi-armed bandit structure in which the rewards are independent of the contextual information. Algorithms that are designed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-07 Niladri S. Chatterji , Vidya Muthukumar , Peter L. Bartlett

Motivated by the need to efficiently identify multiple candidates in high trial-and-error cost tasks such as drug discovery, we propose a near-optimal algorithm to identify all {\epsilon}-best arms (i.e., those at most {\epsilon} worse than…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-02 Zhekai Li , Tianyi Ma , Cheng Hua , Ruihao Zhu

Motivated by the task of hyperparameter optimization, we introduce the non-stochastic best-arm identification problem. Within the multi-armed bandit literature, the cumulative regret objective enjoys algorithms and analyses for both the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-03-02 Kevin Jamieson , Ameet Talwalkar

Thompson Sampling is one of the oldest heuristics for multi-armed bandit problems. It is a randomized algorithm based on Bayesian ideas, and has recently generated significant interest after several studies demonstrated it to have better…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-02-04 Shipra Agrawal , Navin Goyal

Information-theoretic Bayesian regret bounds of Russo and Van Roy capture the dependence of regret on prior uncertainty. However, this dependence is through entropy, which can become arbitrarily large as the number of actions increases. We…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-09 Shi Dong , Benjamin Van Roy

Combinatorial multi-armed bandits provide a fundamental online decision-making environment where a decision-maker interacts with an environment across $T$ time steps, each time selecting an action and learning the cost of that action. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-13 Gerdus Benadè , Rathish Das , Thomas Lavastida

We study reward maximisation in a wide class of structured stochastic multi-armed bandit problems, where the mean rewards of arms satisfy some given structural constraints, e.g. linear, unimodal, sparse, etc. Our aim is to develop methods…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-07-03 Rémy Degenne , Han Shao , Wouter M. Koolen

We derive an alternative proof for the regret of Thompson sampling (\ts) in the stochastic linear bandit setting. While we obtain a regret bound of order $\widetilde{O}(d^{3/2}\sqrt{T})$ as in previous results, the proof sheds new light on…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-11-06 Marc Abeille , Alessandro Lazaric

We consider stochastic non-stationary linear bandits where the linear parameter connecting contexts to the reward changes over time. Existing algorithms in this setting localize the policy by gradually discarding or down-weighting past…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-05 Margherita Lazzaretto , Jonas Peters , Niklas Pfister

I study adversarial attacks against stochastic bandit algorithms. At each round, the learner chooses an arm, and a stochastic reward is generated. The adversary strategically adds corruption to the reward, and the learner is only able to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-18 Shiliang Zuo

We present a new bandit algorithm, SAO (Stochastic and Adversarial Optimal), whose regret is, essentially, optimal both for adversarial rewards and for stochastic rewards. Specifically, SAO combines the square-root worst-case regret of Exp3…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-02-22 Sebastien Bubeck , Aleksandrs Slivkins

The PhD thesis of Maillard (2013) presents a rather obscure algorithm for the $K$-armed bandit problem. This less-known algorithm, which we call Maillard sampling (MS), computes the probability of choosing each arm in a \textit{closed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-08 Jie Bian , Kwang-Sung Jun

We consider the framework of methods for unconstrained minimization that are, in each iteration, restricted to a model that is only a valid approximation to the objective function on some affine subspace containing an incumbent point. These…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-26 Matt Menickelly

We propose a sampling-based trajectory optimization methodology for constrained problems. We extend recent works on stochastic search to deal with box control constraints,as well as nonlinear state constraints for discrete dynamical…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-11-13 George I. Boutselis , Ziyi Wang , Evangelos A. Theodorou