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Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) is arguably the most commonly used method for linear multi-arm bandit problems. While conceptually and computationally simple, this method highly relies on the confidence bounds, failing to strike the optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-05 Kaige Yang , Laura Toni

We consider the problem of bandit optimization, inspired by stochastic optimization and online learning problems with bandit feedback. In this problem, the objective is to minimize a global loss function of all the actions, not necessarily…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-09-07 Quentin Berthet , Vianney Perchet

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

Most bandit policies are designed to either minimize regret in any problem instance, making very few assumptions about the underlying environment, or in a Bayesian sense, assuming a prior distribution over environment parameters. The former…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-07 Branislav Kveton , Martin Mladenov , Chih-Wei Hsu , Manzil Zaheer , Csaba Szepesvari , Craig Boutilier

This study presents two new algorithms for solving linear stochastic bandit problems. The proposed methods use an approach from non-parametric statistics called bootstrapping to create confidence bounds. This is achieved without making any…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-05-05 Nandan Sudarsanam , Balaraman Ravindran

We consider the contextual bandit problem on general action and context spaces, where the learner's rewards depend on their selected actions and an observable context. This generalizes the standard multi-armed bandit to the case where side…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-01-03 Moise Blanchard , Steve Hanneke , Patrick Jaillet

We consider bandit optimization of a smooth reward function, where the goal is cumulative regret minimization. This problem has been studied for $\alpha$-H\"older continuous (including Lipschitz) functions with $0<\alpha\leq 1$. Our main…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-14 Yusha Liu , Yining Wang , Aarti Singh

Bandit based optimisation has a remarkable advantage over gradient based approaches due to their global perspective, which eliminates the danger of getting stuck at local optima. However, for continuous optimisation problems or problems…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-05-30 Ole-Christoffer Granmo

We analyze the $K$-armed bandit problem where the reward for each arm is a noisy realization based on an observed context under mild nonparametric assumptions. We attain tight results for top-arm identification and a sublinear regret of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-01-08 Melody Y. Guan , Heinrich Jiang

Gradient-variation online learning has drawn increasing attention due to its deep connections to game theory, optimization, etc. It has been studied extensively in the full-information setting, but is underexplored with bandit feedback. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Hang Yu , Yu-Hu Yan , Peng Zhao

Many real-world bandit applications are characterized by sparse rewards, which can significantly hinder learning efficiency. Leveraging problem-specific structures for careful distribution modeling is recognized as essential for improving…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-04 Haoyu Wei , Runzhe Wan , Lei Shi , Rui Song

We study a nonparametric contextual bandit problem where the expected reward functions belong to a H\"older class with smoothness parameter $\beta$. We show how this interpolates between two extremes that were previously studied in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-09-14 Yichun Hu , Nathan Kallus , Xiaojie Mao

We consider linear stochastic bandits where the set of actions is an ellipsoid. We provide the first known minimax optimal algorithm for this problem. We first derive a novel information-theoretic lower bound on the regret of any algorithm,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-25 Raymond Zhang , Hedi Hadiji , Richard Combes

In this paper we adapt the nearest neighbour rule to the contextual bandit problem. Our algorithm handles the fully adversarial setting in which no assumptions at all are made about the data-generation process. When combined with a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-11 Stephen Pasteris , Chris Hicks , Vasilios Mavroudis

We address learning Nash equilibria in convex games under the payoff information setting. We consider the case in which the game pseudo-gradient is monotone but not necessarily strictly monotone. This relaxation of strict monotonicity…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-17 Tatiana Tatarenko , Maryam Kamgarpour

We study dynamic regret minimization in unconstrained adversarial linear bandit problems. In this setting, a learner must minimize the cumulative loss relative to an arbitrary sequence of comparators…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Alberto Rumi , Andrew Jacobsen , Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi , Fabio Vitale

We propose the kl-UCB ++ algorithm for regret minimization in stochastic bandit models with exponential families of distributions. We prove that it is simultaneously asymptotically optimal (in the sense of Lai and Robbins' lower bound) and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-09-21 Pierre Ménard , Aurélien Garivier

We study the linear stochastic bandit problem, relaxing the standard i.i.d. assumption on the observation noise. As an alternative to this restrictive assumption, we allow the noise terms across rounds to be sub-Gaussian but interdependent,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-28 Baptiste Abélès , Eugenio Clerico , Hamish Flynn , Gergely Neu

Modern decision-making scenarios often involve data that is both high-dimensional and rich in higher-order contextual information, where existing bandits algorithms fail to generate effective policies. In response, we propose in this paper…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-24 Jiannan Li , Yiyang Yang , Yao Wang , Shaojie Tang

In this paper, we consider a very general model for exploration-exploitation tradeoff which allows arbitrary concave rewards and convex constraints on the decisions across time, in addition to the customary limitation on the time horizon.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-02-25 Shipra Agrawal , Nikhil R. Devanur