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We study stochastic decision-theoretic online learning with full information and event-level pure differential privacy. A COLT open problem of Hu and Mehta asks to determine the optimal gap-dependent regret rate for stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Tommaso Cesari , Roberto Colomboni

This paper is devoted to the extension of the regret lower bound beyond ergodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the problem dependent setting. While the regret lower bound for ergodic MDPs is well-known and reached by tractable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-23 Victor Boone , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

The expected regret of any reinforcement learning algorithm is lower bounded by $\Omega\left(\sqrt{DXAT}\right)$ for undiscounted returns, where $D$ is the diameter of the Markov decision process, $X$ the size of the state space, $A$ the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Lucas Weber , Ana Bušić , Jiamin Zhu

Any reinforcement learning algorithm that applies to all Markov decision processes (MDPs) will suffer $\Omega(\sqrt{SAT})$ regret on some MDP, where $T$ is the elapsed time and $S$ and $A$ are the cardinalities of the state and action…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-11-04 Ian Osband , Benjamin Van Roy

We study the sequential general online regression, known also as the sequential probability assignments, under logarithmic loss when compared against a broad class of experts. We focus on obtaining tight, often matching, lower and upper…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-02 Changlong Wu , Mohsen Heidari , Ananth Grama , Wojciech Szpankowski

Multi-armed Bandit motivates methods with provable upper bounds on regret and also the counterpart lower bounds have been extensively studied in this context. Recently, Multi-agent Multi-armed Bandit has gained significant traction in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-17 Mengfan Xu , Diego Klabjan

In this paper, we investigate the stochastic contextual bandit with general function space and graph feedback. We propose an algorithm that addresses this problem by adapting to both the underlying graph structures and reward gaps. To the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-09 Xueping Gong , Jiheng Zhang

We develop a new approach to obtaining high probability regret bounds for online learning with bandit feedback against an adaptive adversary. While existing approaches all require carefully constructing optimistic and biased loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-02 Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Mengxiao Zhang

We study the constrained variant of the \emph{multi-armed bandit} (MAB) problem, in which the learner aims not only at minimizing the total loss incurred during the learning dynamic, but also at controlling the violation of multiple…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Francesco Emanuele Stradi , Kalana Kalupahana , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We study minimax optimal reinforcement learning in episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs), which are MDPs with conditionally independent transition components. Assuming the factorization is known, we propose two model-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Yi Tian , Jian Qian , Suvrit Sra

We improve the efficiency of algorithms for stochastic \emph{combinatorial semi-bandits}. In most interesting problems, state-of-the-art algorithms take advantage of structural properties of rewards, such as \emph{independence}. However,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-24 Pierre Perrault , Vianney Perchet , Michal Valko

We consider model selection in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. Given a set of base learning algorithms, an effective model selection strategy adapts to the best learning algorithm in an online fashion. We show that by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Aldo Pacchiano , My Phan

In the contextual linear bandit setting, algorithms built on the optimism principle fail to exploit the structure of the problem and have been shown to be asymptotically suboptimal. In this paper, we follow recent approaches of deriving…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-23 Andrea Tirinzoni , Matteo Pirotta , Marcello Restelli , Alessandro Lazaric

As reinforcement learning algorithms are being applied to increasingly complicated and realistic tasks, it is becoming increasingly difficult to solve such problems within a practical time frame. Hence, we focus on a \textit{satisficing}…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Akihiro Tamatsukuri , Tatsuji Takahashi

In this work, we study the learning theory of reward modeling with pairwise comparison data using deep neural networks. We establish a novel non-asymptotic regret bound for deep reward estimators in a non-parametric setting, which depends…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-13 Yuanhang Luo , Yeheng Ge , Ruijian Han , Guohao Shen

We study reinforcement learning in non-episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs). We propose two near-optimal and oracle-efficient algorithms for FMDPs. Assuming oracle access to an FMDP planner, they enjoy a Bayesian and a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-06-09 Ziping Xu , Ambuj Tewari

Recent progress in reinforcement learning has led to remarkable performance in a range of applications, but its deployment in high-stakes settings remains quite rare. One reason is a limited understanding of the behavior of reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-04 Feicheng Wang , Lucas Janson

We derive a novel asymptotic problem-dependent lower-bound for regret minimization in finite-horizon tabular Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). While, similar to prior work (e.g., for ergodic MDPs), the lower-bound is the solution to an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-25 Andrea Tirinzoni , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric

This paper is in the field of stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits (MABs), i.e. those sequential selection techniques able to learn online using only the feedback given by the chosen option (a.k.a. $arm$). We study a particular case of the rested…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-28 Marco Fiandri , Alberto Maria Metelli , Francesco Trov`o

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) replaces hard-to-specify rewards with pairwise trajectory preferences, yet regret-oriented theory often assumes that preference labels are generated consistently from a single ground-truth…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Ming Shi , Yingbin Liang , Ness B. Shroff , Ananthram Swami