Related papers: Causal Bandits with Unknown Graph Structure
Multi-armed bandit problems provide a framework to identify the optimal intervention over a sequence of repeated experiments. Without additional assumptions, minimax optimal performance (measured by cumulative regret) is well-understood.…
As the adoption of federated learning increases for learning from sensitive data local to user devices, it is natural to ask if the learning can be done using implicit signals generated as users interact with the applications of interest,…
We study multi-armed bandits under network interference, where each unit's reward depends on its own treatment and those of its neighbors in a given graph. This induces an exponentially large action space, making standard approaches…
This paper introduces a new framework for recovering causal graphs from observational data, leveraging the observation that the distribution of an effect, conditioned on its causes, remains invariant to changes in the prior distribution of…
We study distributed cooperative decision-making under the explore-exploit tradeoff in the multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem. We extend the state-of-the-art frequentist and Bayesian algorithms for single-agent MAB problems to cooperative…
The aim in many sciences is to understand the mechanisms that underlie the observed distribution of variables, starting from a set of initial hypotheses. Causal discovery allows us to infer mechanisms as sets of cause and effect…
To address the contextual bandit problem, we propose an online random forest algorithm. The analysis of the proposed algorithm is based on the sample complexity needed to find the optimal decision stump. Then, the decision stumps are…
Real world systems evolve in continuous-time according to their underlying causal relationships, yet their dynamics are often unknown. Existing approaches to learning such dynamics typically either discretize time -- leading to poor…
We extend Bayesian multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms beyond their original setting by making use of sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods. A MAB is a sequential decision making problem where the goal is to learn a policy that maximizes…
Algorithmic decisions about individuals require predictions that are not only accurate but also fair with respect to sensitive attributes such as gender and race. Causal notions of fairness align with legal requirements, yet many methods…
Causal discovery is challenging in general dynamical systems because, without strong structural assumptions, the underlying causal graph may not be identifiable even from interventional data. However, many real-world systems exhibit…
The fundamental challenge in causal induction is to infer the underlying graph structure given observational and/or interventional data. Most existing causal induction algorithms operate by generating candidate graphs and evaluating them…
In the classical multi-armed bandit problem, instance-dependent algorithms attain improved performance on "easy" problems with a gap between the best and second-best arm. Are similar guarantees possible for contextual bandits? While…
Understanding causal relationships between variables is fundamental across scientific disciplines. Most causal discovery algorithms rely on two key assumptions: (i) all variables are observed, and (ii) the underlying causal graph is…
Contextual bandit algorithms are increasingly replacing non-adaptive A/B tests in e-commerce, healthcare, and policymaking because they can both improve outcomes for study participants and increase the chance of identifying good or even…
Causal learning is a beneficial approach to analyze the cause and effect relationships among variables in a dataset. A causal graph can be generated from a dataset using a particular causal algorithm, for instance, the PC algorithm or Fast…
We introduce the study of fairness in multi-armed bandit problems. Our fairness definition can be interpreted as demanding that given a pool of applicants (say, for college admission or mortgages), a worse applicant is never favored over a…
Multi-armed bandits (MAB) model sequential decision making problems, in which a learner sequentially chooses arms with unknown reward distributions in order to maximize its cumulative reward. Most of the prior work on MAB assumes that the…
Non-stationarity is ubiquitous in human behavior and addressing it in the contextual bandits is challenging. Several works have addressed the problem by investigating semi-parametric contextual bandits and warned that ignoring…
The contextual bandit literature has traditionally focused on algorithms that address the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. In particular, greedy algorithms that exploit current estimates without any exploration may be sub-optimal in…