Related papers: Off-policy Confidence Sequences
A major research direction in contextual bandits is to develop algorithms that are computationally efficient, yet support flexible, general-purpose function approximation. Algorithms based on modeling rewards have shown strong empirical…
This paper studies bandit problems where an agent has access to offline data that might be utilized to potentially improve the estimation of each arm's reward distribution. A major obstacle in this setting is the existence of compound…
The (contextual) multi-armed bandit problem (MAB) provides a formalization of sequential decision-making which has many applications. However, validly evaluating MAB policies is challenging; we either resort to simulations which inherently…
We study contextual bandits with ancillary constraints on resources, which are common in real-world applications such as choosing ads or dynamic pricing of items. We design the first algorithm for solving these problems that handles…
Recent advances in learning techniques have garnered attention for their applicability to a diverse range of real-world sequential decision-making problems. Yet, many practical applications have critical constraints for operation in real…
We present and prove properties of a new offline policy evaluator for an exploration learning setting which is superior to previous evaluators. In particular, it simultaneously and correctly incorporates techniques from importance…
A sensing policy for the restless multi-armed bandit problem with stationary but unknown reward distributions is proposed. The work is presented in the context of cognitive radios in which the bandit problem arises when deciding which parts…
This paper is concerned with constructing a confidence interval for a target policy's value offline based on a pre-collected observational data in infinite horizon settings. Most of the existing works assume no unmeasured variables exist…
This paper studies semiparametric contextual bandits, a generalization of the linear stochastic bandit problem where the reward for an action is modeled as a linear function of known action features confounded by an non-linear…
In this paper, we address the stochastic contextual linear bandit problem, where a decision maker is provided a context (a random set of actions drawn from a distribution). The expected reward of each action is specified by the inner…
Off-policy evaluation is critical in a number of applications where new policies need to be evaluated offline before online deployment. Most existing methods focus on the expected return, define the target parameter through averaging and…
Methods for sequential decision-making are often built upon a foundational assumption that the underlying decision process is stationary. This limits the application of such methods because real-world problems are often subject to changes…
This paper investigates the problem of online prediction learning, where learning proceeds continuously as the agent interacts with an environment. The predictions made by the agent are contingent on a particular way of behaving,…
Contextual bandit learning is a reinforcement learning problem where the learner repeatedly receives a set of features (context), takes an action and receives a reward based on the action and context. We consider this problem under a…
Contextual bandits are widely-used in the study of learning-based control policies for finite action spaces. While the problem is well-studied for bandits with perfectly observed context vectors, little is known about the case of…
Contextual bandit algorithms have transformed modern experimentation by enabling real-time adaptation for personalized treatment and efficient use of data. Yet these advantages create challenges for statistical inference due to adaptivity.…
Many efficient algorithms with strong theoretical guarantees have been proposed for the contextual multi-armed bandit problem. However, applying these algorithms in practice can be difficult because they require domain expertise to build…
In this survey we cover a few stochastic and adversarial contextual bandit algorithms. We analyze each algorithm's assumption and regret bound.
Many practical applications, such as recommender systems and learning to rank, involve solving multiple similar tasks. One example is learning of recommendation policies for users with similar movie preferences, where the users may still…
Contextual Multi-Armed Bandits is a well-known and accepted online optimization algorithm, that is used in many Web experiences to tailor content or presentation to users' traffic. Much has been published on theoretical guarantees (e.g.…