Related papers: Learning the Optimal Recommendation from Explorati…
Bandit learning has been an increasingly popular design choice for recommender system. Despite the strong interest in bandit learning from the community, there remains multiple bottlenecks that prevent many bandit learning approaches from…
We consider the problem of reward maximization in the dueling bandit setup along with constraints on resource consumption. As in the classic dueling bandits, at each round the learner has to choose a pair of items from a set of $K$ items…
In this paper, we study collaborative filtering in an interactive setting, in which the recommender agents iterate between making recommendations and updating the user profile based on the interactive feedback. The most challenging problem…
In this work, we study sequential choice bandits with feedback. We propose bandit algorithms for a platform that personalizes users' experience to maximize its rewards. For each action directed to a given user, the platform is given a…
The Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) framework highlights the tension between acquiring new knowledge (Exploration) and leveraging available knowledge (Exploitation). In the classical MAB problem, a decision maker must choose an arm at each time…
We consider a K-armed bandit problem in general graphs where agents are arbitrarily connected and each of them has limited memorizing capabilities and communication bandwidth. The goal is to let each of the agents eventually learn the best…
In multi-armed bandits, the most-explored arms are the most informative, while reward maximization typically pulls only the best arm. We study the tradeoff between identifying arm means accurately and accumulating reward, and present an…
Workers participating in a crowdsourcing platform can have a wide range of abilities and interests. An important problem in crowdsourcing is the task recommendation problem, in which tasks that best match a particular worker's preferences…
We consider a stochastic bandit problem with a possibly infinite number of arms. We write $p^*$ for the proportion of optimal arms and $\Delta$ for the minimal mean-gap between optimal and sub-optimal arms. We characterize the optimal…
We consider a multi-armed bandit problem where the decision maker can explore and exploit different arms at every round. The exploited arm adds to the decision maker's cumulative reward (without necessarily observing the reward) while the…
Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) algorithms are widely used in recommender systems that require continuous, incremental learning. A core aspect of MABs is the exploration-exploitation trade-off: choosing between exploiting items likely to be…
We propose a model for learning with bandit feedback while accounting for deterministically evolving and unobservable states that we call Bandits with Deterministically Evolving States ($B$-$DES$). The workhorse applications of our model…
We study the robust best-arm identification problem (RBAI) in the case of linear rewards. The primary objective is to identify a near-optimal robust arm, which involves selecting arms at every round and assessing their robustness by…
We consider the problem of sequentially making decisions that are rewarded by "successes" and "failures" which can be predicted through an unknown relationship that depends on a partially controllable vector of attributes for each instance.…
Sampling from distributions to find the one with the largest mean arises in a broad range of applications, and it can be mathematically modeled as a multi-armed bandit problem in which each distribution is associated with an arm. This paper…
In academic literature, recommender systems are often evaluated on the task of next-item prediction. The procedure aims to give an answer to the question: "Given the natural sequence of user-item interactions up to time t, can we predict…
The improving multi-armed bandits problem is a formal model for allocating effort under uncertainty, motivated by scenarios such as investing research effort into new technologies, performing clinical trials, and hyperparameter selection…
We study reinforcement learning from human feedback in general Markov decision processes, where agents learn from trajectory-level preference comparisons. A central challenge in this setting is to design algorithms that select informative…
In digital health and EdTech, recommendation systems face a significant challenge: users often choose impulsively, in ways that conflict with the platform's long-term payoffs. This misalignment makes it difficult to effectively learn to…
All learning algorithms for recommendations face inevitable and critical trade-off between exploiting partial knowledge of a user's preferences for short-term satisfaction and exploring additional user preferences for long-term coverage.…