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Recently, several studies (Zhou et al., 2021a; Zhang et al., 2021b; Kim et al., 2021; Zhou and Gu, 2022) have provided variance-dependent regret bounds for linear contextual bandits, which interpolates the regret for the worst-case regime…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-22 Heyang Zhao , Jiafan He , Dongruo Zhou , Tong Zhang , Quanquan Gu

We investigate the adversarial bandit problem with multiple plays under semi-bandit feedback. We introduce a highly efficient algorithm that asymptotically achieves the performance of the best switching $m$-arm strategy with minimax optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-02 N. Mert Vural , Hakan Gokcesu , Kaan Gokcesu , Suleyman S. Kozat

We consider the problem of contextual bandits and imitation learning, where the learner lacks direct knowledge of the executed action's reward. Instead, the learner can actively query an expert at each round to compare two actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-25 Ayush Sekhari , Karthik Sridharan , Wen Sun , Runzhe Wu

We study the problem of learning 'good' interventions in a stochastic environment modeled by its underlying causal graph. Good interventions refer to interventions that maximize rewards. Specifically, we consider the setting of a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Fateme Jamshidi , Jalal Etesami , Negar Kiyavash

Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithms are a widely-used class of sequential algorithms for the $K$-armed bandit problem. Despite extensive research over the past decades aimed at understanding their asymptotic and (near) minimax…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-12-10 Qiyang Han , Koulik Khamaru , Cun-Hui Zhang

Causal knowledge can be used to support decision-making problems. This has been recognized in the causal bandits literature, where a causal (multi-armed) bandit is characterized by a causal graphical model and a target variable. The arms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Francisco N. F. Q. Simoes , Itai Feigenbaum , Mehdi Dastani , Thijs van Ommen

In this paper, we consider the multi-armed bandit problem with high-dimensional features. First, we prove a minimax lower bound, $\mathcal{O}\big((\log d)^{\frac{\alpha+1}{2}}T^{\frac{1-\alpha}{2}}+\log T\big)$, for the cumulative regret,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-27 Ke Li , Yun Yang , Naveen N. Narisetty

This paper investigates the problem of regret minimization for multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems with local differential privacy (LDP) guarantee. In stochastic bandit systems, the rewards may refer to the users' activities, which may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-08 Wenbo Ren , Xingyu Zhou , Jia Liu , Ness B. Shroff

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Andrew Wagenmaker , Julian Katz-Samuels , Kevin Jamieson

In this work, we develop linear bandit algorithms that automatically adapt to different environments. By plugging a novel loss estimator into the optimization problem that characterizes the instance-optimal strategy, our first algorithm not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Mengxiao Zhang , Xiaojin Zhang

We study the problem of information sharing and cooperation in Multi-Player Multi-Armed bandits. We propose the first algorithm that achieves logarithmic regret for this problem when the collision reward is unknown. Our results are based on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Aldo Pacchiano , Peter Bartlett , Michael I. Jordan

Designing efficient general-purpose contextual bandit algorithms that work with large -- or even continuous -- action spaces would facilitate application to important scenarios such as information retrieval, recommendation systems, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Yinglun Zhu , Paul Mineiro

In this paper, we provide the first investigation into adaptive combinatorial experimental design, focusing on the trade-off between regret minimization and statistical power in combinatorial multi-armed bandits (CMAB). While minimizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Hongrui Xie , Junyu Cao , Kan Xu

We consider the stochastic linear (multi-armed) contextual bandit problem with the possibility of hidden simple multi-armed bandit structure in which the rewards are independent of the contextual information. Algorithms that are designed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-10-07 Niladri S. Chatterji , Vidya Muthukumar , Peter L. Bartlett

We study the linear bandit problem that accounts for partially observable features. Without proper handling, unobserved features can lead to linear regret in the decision horizon $T$, as their influence on rewards is unknown. To tackle this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-19 Wonyoung Kim , Sungwoo Park , Garud Iyengar , Assaf Zeevi , Min-hwan Oh

We present differentially private algorithms for the stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) problem. This is a problem for applications such as adaptive clinical trials, experiment design, and user-targeted advertising where private…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-11-30 Aristide Tossou , Christos Dimitrakakis

Algorithms for hyperparameter optimization abound, all of which work well under different and often unverifiable assumptions. Motivated by the general challenge of sequentially choosing which algorithm to use, we study the more specific…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-04-12 Robert Nishihara , David Lopez-Paz , Léon Bottou

We consider a stochastic bandit problem with infinitely many arms. In this setting, the learner has no chance of trying all the arms even once and has to dedicate its limited number of samples only to a certain number of arms. All previous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-05-19 Alexandra Carpentier , Michal Valko

A major research direction in contextual bandits is to develop algorithms that are computationally efficient, yet support flexible, general-purpose function approximation. Algorithms based on modeling rewards have shown strong empirical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-14 Dylan J. Foster , Claudio Gentile , Mehryar Mohri , Julian Zimmert

We study the kernelized bandit problem, that involves designing an adaptive strategy for querying a noisy zeroth-order-oracle to efficiently learn about the optimizer of an unknown function $f$ with a norm bounded by $M<\infty$ in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-15 Shubhanshu Shekhar , Tara Javidi