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We introduce the problem of model selection for contextual bandits, where a learner must adapt to the complexity of the optimal policy while balancing exploration and exploitation. Our main result is a new model selection guarantee for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-15 Dylan J. Foster , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Haipeng Luo

We study model selection in linear bandits, where the learner must adapt to the dimension (denoted by $d_\star$) of the smallest hypothesis class containing the true linear model while balancing exploration and exploitation. Previous papers…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-17 Yinglun Zhu , Robert Nowak

We consider the classical stochastic multi-armed bandit but where, from time to time and roughly with frequency $\epsilon$, an extra observation is gathered by the agent for free. We prove that, no matter how small $\epsilon$ is the agent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-11 Rémy Degenne , Evrard Garcelon , Vianney Perchet

Sequential decision-making algorithms such as multi-armed bandits can find optimal personalized decisions, but are notoriously sample-hungry. In personalized medicine, for example, training a bandit from scratch for every patient is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Ahmet Zahid Balcıoğlu , Newton Mwai , Emil Carlsson , Fredrik D. Johansson

It is well-known that for sparse linear bandits, when ignoring the dependency on sparsity which is much smaller than the ambient dimension, the worst-case minimax regret is $\widetilde{\Theta}\left(\sqrt{dT}\right)$ where $d$ is the ambient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-08 Yan Dai , Ruosong Wang , Simon S. Du

This paper introduces a general framework for risk-sensitive bandits that integrates the notions of risk-sensitive objectives by adopting a rich class of distortion riskmetrics. The introduced framework subsumes the various existing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-13 Meltem Tatlı , Arpan Mukherjee , Prashanth L. A. , Karthikeyan Shanmugam , Ali Tajer

We study agents communicating over an underlying network by exchanging messages, in order to optimize their individual regret in a common nonstochastic multi-armed bandit problem. We derive regret minimization algorithms that guarantee for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-19 Yogev Bar-On , Yishay Mansour

Contextual multi-armed bandit algorithms are widely used in sequential decision tasks such as news article recommendation systems, web page ad placement algorithms, and mobile health. Most of the existing algorithms have regret proportional…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-02-14 Gi-Soo Kim , Myunghee Cho Paik

We address online linear optimization problems when the possible actions of the decision maker are represented by binary vectors. The regret of the decision maker is the difference between her realized loss and the best loss she would have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-04-02 Jean-Yves Audibert , Sébastien Bubeck , Gábor Lugosi

The stochastic multi-arm bandit problem has been extensively studied under standard assumptions on the arm's distribution (e.g bounded with known support, exponential family, etc). These assumptions are suitable for many real-world problems…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-11-19 Dorian Baudry , Patrick Saux , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

Batch policy optimization considers leveraging existing data for policy construction before interacting with an environment. Although interest in this problem has grown significantly in recent years, its theoretical foundations remain…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-07 Chenjun Xiao , Yifan Wu , Tor Lattimore , Bo Dai , Jincheng Mei , Lihong Li , Csaba Szepesvari , Dale Schuurmans

This paper introduces the framework of multi-armed sampling, which serves as the sampling counterpart to the optimization problem of multi-armed bandits. Our primary motivation is to rigorously examine the exploration-exploitation trade-off…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Mohammad Pedramfar , Siamak Ravanbakhsh

Contextual bandits are a central framework for sequential decision-making, with applications ranging from recommendation systems to clinical trials. While nonparametric methods can flexibly model complex reward structures, they suffer from…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-01-01 Wanteng Ma , T. Tony Cai

In many platforms, user arrivals exhibit a self-reinforcing behavior: future user arrivals are likely to have preferences similar to users who were satisfied in the past. In other words, arrivals exhibit positive externalities. We study…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-08 Virag Shah , Jose Blanchet , Ramesh Johari

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-04-25 Lai Wei , Vaibhav Srivastava

We consider a multi-armed bandit problem where payoffs are a linear function of an observed stochastic contextual variable. In the scenario where there exists a gap between optimal and suboptimal rewards, several algorithms have been…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-07-08 José Bento , Stratis Ioannidis , S. Muthukrishnan , Jinyun Yan

In the bandits with knapsacks framework (BwK) the learner has $m$ resource-consumption (packing) constraints. We focus on the generalization of BwK in which the learner has a set of general long-term constraints. The goal of the learner is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-13 Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Andrea Celli

We investigate contextual bandits in the presence of side-observations across arms in order to design recommendation algorithms for users connected via social networks. Users in social networks respond to their friends' activity, and hence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Rahul Singh , Fang Liu , Xin Liu , Ness Shroff

We study the problem of using causal models to improve the rate at which good interventions can be learned online in a stochastic environment. Our formalism combines multi-arm bandits and causal inference to model a novel type of bandit…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-06-13 Finnian Lattimore , Tor Lattimore , Mark D. Reid

We present algorithms for reducing the Dueling Bandits problem to the conventional (stochastic) Multi-Armed Bandits problem. The Dueling Bandits problem is an online model of learning with ordinal feedback of the form "A is preferred to B"…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-05-15 Nir Ailon , Thorsten Joachims , Zohar Karnin