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We consider an opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) problem where the time-varying condition of each channel (e.g., as a result of random fading or certain primary users' activities) is modeled as an arbitrary finite-state Markov chain. At…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2010-10-04 Cem Tekin , Mingyan Liu

In this paper, we study the problem of regret minimization for episodic Reinforcement Learning (RL) both in the model-free and the model-based setting. We focus on learning with general function classes and general model classes, and we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-04 Grigoris Velegkas , Zhuoran Yang , Amin Karbasi

We propose feature perturbation, a simple yet effective exploration strategy for contextual bandits that injects randomness directly into feature inputs, instead of randomizing unknown parameters or adding noise to rewards. Remarkably, this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Seouh-won Yi , Min-hwan Oh

In a typical optimization problem, the task is to pick one of a number of options with the lowest cost or the highest value. In practice, these cost/value quantities often come through processes such as measurement or machine learning,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-07-20 Mohammad Mahdian , Jieming Mao , Kangning Wang

We consider a combinatorial multi-armed bandit problem for maximum value reward function under maximum value and index feedback. This is a new feedback structure that lies in between commonly studied semi-bandit and full-bandit feedback…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-26 Yiliu Wang , Wei Chen , Milan Vojnović

Reinforcement learning (RL) in large environments often suffers from severe computational bottlenecks, as conventional regret minimization algorithms require repeated, costly calls to planning and statistical estimation oracles. While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Haichen Hu , Jian Qian , David Simchi-Levi

We study the adversarial kernel bandit problem, in which the loss at each round is induced by an arbitrary bounded element of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We propose an exponential-weights algorithm built on a regularized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Yu-Jie Zhang , Hao Qiu , Jonathan Scarlett , Kevin Jamieson

We propose a new method for optimistic planning in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes based on the idea of adding regularization to the updates of an otherwise standard approximate value iteration procedure. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-16 Antoine Moulin , Gergely Neu

We develop several provably efficient model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We consider both online setting and the setting with access to a simulator. In the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-29 Zihan Zhang , Qiaomin Xie

Policy learning is a quickly growing area. As robotics and computers control day-to-day life, their error rate needs to be minimized and controlled. There are many policy learning methods and bandit methods with provable error rates that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-31 Michael Rawson , Radu Balan

We study the challenging exploration incentive problem in both bandit and reinforcement learning, where the rewards are scale-free and potentially unbounded, driven by real-world scenarios and differing from existing work. Past works in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Mengfan Xu , Diego Klabjan

Many works have developed no-regret algorithms for contextual bandits with function approximation, where the mean reward function over context-action pairs belongs to a function class. Although there are many approaches to this problem, one…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Aldo Pacchiano

We study the framework of a dynamic decision-making scenario with resource constraints. In this framework, an agent, whose target is to maximize the total reward under the initial inventory, selects an action in each round upon observing a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-19 Zhaohua Chen , Rui Ai , Mingwei Yang , Yuqi Pan , Chang Wang , Xiaotie Deng

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 present a new anytime algorithm that achieves near-optimal regret for any instance of finite stochastic partial monitoring. In particular, the new algorithm achieves the minimax regret, within logarithmic factors, for both "easy" and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-03 Gabor Bartok , Navid Zolghadr , Csaba Szepesvari

We study online learning in the random-order model, where the multiset of loss functions is chosen adversarially but revealed in a uniformly random order. By extending the batch-to-online transformation of Dong and Yoshida (2023), we show…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-11 Shinsaku Sakaue , Yuichi Yoshida

Due to the drastic gap in complexity between sequential and batch statistical learning, recent work has studied a smoothed sequential learning setting, where Nature is constrained to select contexts with density bounded by 1/{\sigma} with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-27 Adam Block , Max Simchowitz

We introduce SCAL, an algorithm designed to perform efficient exploration-exploitation in any unknown weakly-communicating Markov decision process (MDP) for which an upper bound $c$ on the span of the optimal bias function is known. For an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-09 Ronan Fruit , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric , Ronald Ortner

We consider the problem of online combinatorial optimization under semi-bandit feedback, where a learner has to repeatedly pick actions from a combinatorial decision set in order to minimize the total losses associated with its decisions.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-06-11 Gergely Neu

This paper studies batched bandit learning problems for nondegenerate functions. We introduce an algorithm that solves the batched bandit problem for nondegenerate functions near-optimally. More specifically, we introduce an algorithm,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-09 Yu Liu , Yunlu Shu , Tianyu Wang