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The Bayesian posterior minimizes the "inferential risk" which itself bounds the "predictive risk". This bound is tight when the likelihood and prior are well-specified. However since misspecification induces a gap, the Bayesian posterior…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-24 Warren R. Morningstar , Alexander A. Alemi , Joshua V. Dillon

We theoretically justify the recent empirical finding of [Teh et al., 2025] that a transformer pretrained on synthetically generated data achieves strong performance on empirical Bayes (EB) problems. We take an indirect approach to this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-18 Nick Cannella , Anzo Teh , Yanjun Han , Yury Polyanskiy

Among various acquisition functions (AFs) in Bayesian optimization (BO), Gaussian process upper confidence bound (GP-UCB) and Thompson sampling (TS) are well-known options with established theoretical properties regarding Bayesian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-05 Shion Takeno , Yu Inatsu , Masayuki Karasuyama , Ichiro Takeuchi

Measurement error occurs when a covariate influencing a response variable is corrupted by noise. This can lead to misleading inference outcomes, particularly in problems where accurately estimating the relationship between covariates and…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-16 Charita Dellaporta , Theodoros Damoulas

Random effects model can account for the lack of fitting a regression model and increase precision of estimating area-level means. However, in case that the synthetic mean provides accurate estimates, the prior distribution may inflate an…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-12-05 Shonosuke Sugasawa , Tatsuya Kubokawa , Kota Ogasawara

We study the problem of online learning in contextual bandit problems where the loss function is assumed to belong to a known parametric function class. We propose a new analytic framework for this setting that bridges the Bayesian theory…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-28 Gergely Neu , Matteo Papini , Ludovic Schwartz

Many recently developed Bayesian methods have focused on sparse signal detection. However, much less work has been done addressing the natural follow-up question: how to make valid inferences for the magnitude of those signals after…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-03-02 Spencer Woody , Oscar Hernan Madrid Padilla , James G. Scott

Bayesian experts who are exposed to different evidence often make contradictory probabilistic forecasts. An aggregator, ignorant of the underlying model, uses this to calculate her own forecast. We use the notions of scoring rules and…

Economics · Quantitative Finance 2018-02-13 Itai Areili , Yakov Babichenko , Rann Smorodinsky

We study best-arm identification (BAI) in the fixed-budget setting. Adaptive allocations based on upper confidence bounds (UCBs), such as UCBE, are known to work well in BAI. However, it is well-known that its optimal regret is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-24 Rong J. B. Zhu , Yanqi Qiu

Adaptive experimentation under unknown network interference requires solving two coupled problems: (i) learning the underlying dynamics of interference among units and (ii) using these dynamics to inform treatment allocation in order to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-13 Aidan Gleich , Eric Laber , Alexander Volfovsky

We study Gaussian Process Thompson Sampling (GP-TS) for sequential decision-making over compact, continuous action spaces and provide a frequentist regret analysis based on fractional Gaussian process posteriors, without relying on domain…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-02-17 Somjit Roy , Prateek Jaiswal , Anirban Bhattacharya , Debdeep Pati , Bani K. Mallick

For decision making under uncertainty, min-max regret has been established as a popular methodology to find robust solutions. In this approach, we compare the performance of our solution against the best possible performance had we known…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-11-25 Marc Goerigk , Michael Hartisch

We propose a general framework for obtaining probabilistic solutions to PDE-based inverse problems. Bayesian methods are attractive for uncertainty quantification but assume knowledge of the likelihood model or data generation process. This…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-28 Youngsoo Baek , Wilkins Aquino , Sayan Mukherjee

Probabilistic classifiers are central for making informed decisions under uncertainty. Based on the maximum expected utility principle, optimal decision rules can be derived using the posterior class probabilities and misclassification…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Alexandre Perez-Lebel , Gael Varoquaux , Sanmi Koyejo , Matthieu Doutreligne , Marine Le Morvan

In many sequential decision problems, an agent performs a repeated task. He then suffers regret and obtains information that he may use in the following rounds. However, sometimes the agent may also obtain information and avoid suffering…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Itai Shufaro , Nadav Merlis , Nir Weinberger , Shie Mannor

Bayesian statistics has gained popularity in psychological research due to its intuitive uncertainty quantification and convenient information-updating rules. In many applications, however, prior distributions are introduced merely as…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-10 Yang Liu , Jonathan P. Williams , Jan Hannig

The standard theory of optimal stopping is based on the idealised assumption that the underlying process is essentially known. In this paper, we drop this restriction and study data-driven optimal stopping for a general diffusion process,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-12-12 Sören Christensen , Niklas Dexheimer , Claudia Strauch

We consider the problem of minimizing different notions of swap regret in online optimization. These forms of regret are tightly connected to correlated equilibrium concepts in games, and have been more recently shown to guarantee…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Ioannis Anagnostides , Gabriele Farina , Maxwell Fishelson , Haipeng Luo , Jon Schneider

Many high-dimensional online decision-making problems can be modeled as stochastic sparse linear bandits. Most existing algorithms are designed to achieve optimal worst-case regret in either the data-rich regime, where polynomial dependence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-29 Ludovic Schwartz , Hamish Flynn , Gergely Neu

Consider the Gaussian sequence model under the additional assumption that a fixed fraction of the means is known. We study the problem of variance estimation from a frequentist Bayesian perspective. The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE)…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-12-19 Gianluca Finocchio , Johannes Schmidt-Hieber