Related papers: Variational Bayesian Optimistic Sampling
Contextual bandits serve as a fundamental model for many sequential decision making tasks. The most popular theoretically justified approaches are based on the optimism principle. While these algorithms can be practical, they are known to…
Learning in games is a fundamental problem in machine learning and artificial intelligence, with numerous applications~\citep{silver2016mastering,schrittwieser2020mastering}. This work investigates two-player zero-sum matrix games with an…
This paper studies bandit problems where an agent has access to offline data that might be utilized to potentially improve the estimation of each arm's reward distribution. A major obstacle in this setting is the existence of compound…
Thompson sampling has proven effective across a wide range of stationary bandit environments. However, as we demonstrate in this paper, it can perform poorly when applied to non-stationary environments. We attribute such failures to the…
In this paper, we introduce and analyze a variant of the Thompson sampling (TS) algorithm for contextual bandits. At each round, traditional TS requires samples from the current posterior distribution, which is usually intractable. To…
The purpose of this paper is to provide further understanding into the structure of the sequential allocation ("stochastic multi-armed bandit", or MAB) problem by establishing probability one finite horizon bounds and convergence rates for…
We present a modular approach to reinforcement learning that uses a Bayesian representation of the uncertainty over models. The approach, BOSS (Best of Sampled Set), drives exploration by sampling multiple models from the posterior and…
Multi-armed bandit problems are the predominant theoretical model of exploration-exploitation tradeoffs in learning, and they have countless applications ranging from medical trials, to communication networks, to Web search and advertising.…
We study social learning dynamics motivated by reviews on online platforms. The agents collectively follow a simple multi-armed bandit protocol, but each agent acts myopically, without regards to exploration. We allow the greedy…
We study the non-stationary stochastic multiarmed bandit (MAB) problem and propose two generic algorithms, namely, the limited memory deterministic sequencing of exploration and exploitation (LM-DSEE) and the Sliding-Window Upper Confidence…
This paper unifies the design and the analysis of risk-averse Thompson sampling algorithms for the multi-armed bandit problem for a class of risk functionals $\rho$ that are continuous and dominant. We prove generalised concentration bounds…
In this report, we survey Bayesian Optimization methods focussed on the Multi-Armed Bandit Problem. We take the help of the paper "Portfolio Allocation for Bayesian Optimization". We report a small literature survey on the acquisition…
In several applications of the stochastic multi-armed bandit problem, the traditional objective of maximizing the expected total reward can be inappropriate. In this paper, motivated by certain operational concerns in online platforms, we…
For traffic routing platforms, the choice of which route to recommend to a user depends on the congestion on these routes -- indeed, an individual's utility depends on the number of people using the recommended route at that instance.…
In this paper, we introduce the notion of replicable policies in the context of stochastic bandits, one of the canonical problems in interactive learning. A policy in the bandit environment is called replicable if it pulls, with high…
During online decision making in Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB), one needs to conduct inference on the true mean reward of each arm based on data collected so far at each step. However, since the arms are adaptively selected--thereby yielding…
We construct a new map from a convex function to a distribution on its domain, with the property that this distribution is a multi-scale exploration of the function. We use this map to solve a decade-old open problem in adversarial bandit…
Taking advantage of contextual information can potentially boost the performance of recommender systems. In the era of big data, such side information often has several dimensions. Thus, developing decision-making algorithms to cope with…
In this paper we propose a novel experimental design-based algorithm to minimize regret in online stochastic linear and combinatorial bandits. While existing literature tends to focus on optimism-based algorithms--which have been shown to…
The empirically successful Thompson Sampling algorithm for stochastic bandits has drawn much interest in understanding its theoretical properties. One important benefit of the algorithm is that it allows domain knowledge to be conveniently…