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The performance of acquisition functions for Bayesian optimisation to locate the global optimum of continuous functions is investigated in terms of the Pareto front between exploration and exploitation. We show that Expected Improvement…
In this paper, we propose a novel neural exploration strategy in contextual bandits, EE-Net, distinct from the standard UCB-based and TS-based approaches. Contextual multi-armed bandits have been studied for decades with various…
In this paper, we propose and study opportunistic contextual bandits - a special case of contextual bandits where the exploration cost varies under different environmental conditions, such as network load or return variation in…
Consider a requester who wishes to crowdsource a series of identical binary labeling tasks to a pool of workers so as to achieve an assured accuracy for each task, in a cost optimal way. The workers are heterogeneous with unknown but fixed…
Contextual bandit algorithms are sensitive to the estimation method of the outcome model as well as the exploration method used, particularly in the presence of rich heterogeneity or complex outcome models, which can lead to difficult…
This paper is in the field of stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits (MABs), i.e. those sequential selection techniques able to learn online using only the feedback given by the chosen option (a.k.a. $arm$). We study a particular case of the rested…
Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithms are a widely-used class of sequential algorithms for the $K$-armed bandit problem. Despite extensive research over the past decades aimed at understanding their asymptotic and (near) minimax…
This paper considers stochastic bandits with side observations, a model that accounts for both the exploration/exploitation dilemma and relationships between arms. In this setting, after pulling an arm i, the decision maker also observes…
We propose a multi-agent multi-armed bandit (MA-MAB) framework aimed at ensuring fair outcomes across agents while maximizing overall system performance. A key challenge in this setting is decision-making under limited information about arm…
Contextual multi-armed bandit has shown to be an effective tool in recommender systems. In this paper, we study a novel problem of multi-facet bandits involving a group of bandits, each characterizing the users' needs from one unique…
Classic no-regret multi-armed bandit algorithms, including the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB), Hedge, and EXP3, are inherently unfair by design. Their unfairness stems from their objective of playing the most rewarding arm as frequently as…
Bandits with preference feedback present a powerful tool for optimizing unknown target functions when only pairwise comparisons are allowed instead of direct value queries. This model allows for incorporating human feedback into online…
We study incentivized exploration for the multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem where the players receive compensation for exploring arms other than the greedy choice and may provide biased feedback on reward. We seek to understand the impact of…
Recent works on neural contextual bandits have achieved compelling performances due to their ability to leverage the strong representation power of neural networks (NNs) for reward prediction. Many applications of contextual bandits involve…
Decision-making problems of sequential nature, where decisions made in the past may have an impact on the future, are used to model many practically important applications. In some real-world applications, feedback about a decision is…
In this paper, we study utilizing neural networks for the exploitation and exploration of contextual multi-armed bandits. Contextual multi-armed bandits have been studied for decades with various applications. To solve the…
We study an important variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, which takes penalization into consideration. Instead of directly maximizing cumulative expected reward, we need to balance between the total reward and…
The principle of optimism in the face of uncertainty is one of the most widely used and successful ideas in multi-armed bandits and reinforcement learning. However, existing optimistic algorithms (primarily UCB and its variants) often…
We consider the problem of contextual bandits with stochastic experts, which is a variation of the traditional stochastic contextual bandit with experts problem. In our problem setting, we assume access to a class of stochastic experts,…
Online decision making plays a crucial role in numerous real-world applications. In many scenarios, the decision is made based on performing a sequence of tests on the incoming data points. However, performing all tests can be expensive and…