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We provide an approach for the analysis of randomised exploration algorithms like Thompson sampling that does not rely on forced optimism or posterior inflation. With this, we demonstrate that in the $d$-dimensional linear bandit setting,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-14 Marc Abeille , David Janz , Ciara Pike-Burke

The literature on bandit learning and regret analysis has focused on contexts where the goal is to converge on an optimal action in a manner that limits exploration costs. One shortcoming imposed by this orientation is that it does not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-01 Daniel Russo , David Tse , Benjamin Van Roy

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

In this work, we study the performance of the Thompson Sampling algorithm for Contextual Bandit problems based on the framework introduced by Neu et al. and their concept of lifted information ratio. First, we prove a comprehensive bound on…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-04-27 Amaury Gouverneur , Borja Rodríguez-Gálvez , Tobias J. Oechtering , Mikael Skoglund

We consider stochastic multi-armed bandit problems with complex actions over a set of basic arms, where the decision maker plays a complex action rather than a basic arm in each round. The reward of the complex action is some function of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-11-05 Aditya Gopalan , Shie Mannor , Yishay Mansour

Thompson sampling (TS) is one of the most popular and earliest algorithms to solve stochastic multi-armed bandit problems. We consider a variant of TS, named $\alpha$-TS, where we use a fractional or $\alpha$-posterior ($\alpha\in(0,1)$)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-09-13 Prateek Jaiswal , Debdeep Pati , Anirban Bhattacharya , Bani K. Mallick

Thompson Sampling is one of the most effective methods for contextual bandits and has been generalized to posterior sampling for certain MDP settings. However, existing posterior sampling methods for reinforcement learning are limited by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-24 Christoph Dann , Mehryar Mohri , Tong Zhang , Julian Zimmert

We study a cooperative multi-agent multi-armed bandits with M agents and K arms. The goal of the agents is to minimized the cumulative regret. We adapt a traditional Thompson Sampling algoirthm under the distributed setting. However, with…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-09-10 Jing Dong , Tan Li , Shaolei Ren , Linqi Song

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-17 Marco Fiandri , Alberto Maria Metelli , Francesco Trovò

We study the multi-objective linear contextual bandit problem, where multiple possible conflicting objectives must be optimized simultaneously. We propose \texttt{MOL-TS}, the \textit{first} Thompson Sampling algorithm with Pareto regret…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-02 Somangchan Park , Heesang Ann , Min-hwan Oh

We revisit combinatorial Thompson sampling (CTS) for semi-bandits with sleeping arms, where arm availability varies over time and actions must satisfy combinatorial constraints, as in wireless mesh routing with fluctuating link…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Zhiming Huang , Bingshan Hu , Jianping Pan

Ensemble sampling serves as a practical approximation to Thompson sampling when maintaining an exact posterior distribution over model parameters is computationally intractable. In this paper, we establish a regret bound that ensures…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-02 Chao Qin , Zheng Wen , Xiuyuan Lu , Benjamin Van Roy

In linear contextual bandits, the objective is to select actions that maximize cumulative rewards, modeled as a linear function with unknown parameters. Although Thompson Sampling performs well empirically, it does not achieve optimal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-18 Wonyoung Kim

In the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, a randomized probability matching policy called Thompson sampling (TS) has shown excellent performance in various reward models. In addition to the empirical performance, TS has been shown to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-06 Jongyeong Lee , Junya Honda , Chao-Kai Chiang , Masashi Sugiyama

We study the Combinatorial Thompson Sampling policy (CTS) for combinatorial multi-armed bandit problems (CMAB), within an approximation regret setting. Although CTS has attracted a lot of interest, it has a drawback that other usual CMAB…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-23 Pierre Perrault

We address the problem of regret minimization in logistic contextual bandits, where a learner decides among sequential actions or arms given their respective contexts to maximize binary rewards. Using a fast inference procedure with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-05-22 Bianca Dumitrascu , Karen Feng , Barbara E Engelhardt

In stochastic bandit problems, a Bayesian policy called Thompson sampling (TS) has recently attracted much attention for its excellent empirical performance. However, the theoretical analysis of this policy is difficult and its asymptotic…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2013-11-11 Junya Honda , Akimichi Takemura

Much of the recent literature on bandit learning focuses on algorithms that aim to converge on an optimal action. One shortcoming is that this orientation does not account for time sensitivity, which can play a crucial role when learning an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-09 Daniel Russo , Benjamin Van Roy

Thompson sampling, a Bayesian method for balancing exploration and exploitation in bandit problems, has theoretical guarantees and exhibits strong empirical performance in many domains. Traditional Thompson sampling, however, assumes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-04 Andrew Stirn , Tony Jebara

Contextual bandits constitute a classical framework for decision-making under uncertainty. In this setting, the goal is to learn the arms of highest reward subject to contextual information, while the unknown reward parameters of each arm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-19 Hongju Park , Mohamad Kazem Shirani Faradonbeh