English
Related papers

Related papers: Instance-Dependent Regret Analysis of Kernelized B…

200 papers

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

Recent studies have shown that reinforcement learning with KL-regularized objectives can enjoy faster rates of convergence or logarithmic regret, in contrast to the classical $\sqrt{T}$-type regret in the unregularized setting. However, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Kaixuan Ji , Qingyue Zhao , Heyang Zhao , Qiwei Di , Quanquan Gu

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 linear contextual bandit problem with finite action sets. When the problem dimension is $d$, the time horizon is $T$, and there are $n \leq 2^{d/2}$ candidate actions per time period, we (1) show that the minimax expected…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-08-20 Yingkai Li , Yining Wang , Yuan Zhou

We study the problem of stochastic contextual bandits in the agnostic setting, where the goal is to compete with the best policy in a given class without assuming realizability or imposing model restrictions on losses or rewards. In this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-06 Samuel Girard , Aurelien Bibaut , Arthur Gretton , Nathan Kallus , Houssam Zenati

We consider online convex optimization with a zero-order oracle feedback. In particular, the decision maker does not know the explicit representation of the time-varying cost functions, or their gradients. At each time step, she observes…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-05 Tatiana Tatarenko , Maryam Kamgarpour

Contextual bandits are a rich model for sequential decision making given side information, with important applications, e.g., in recommender systems. We propose novel algorithms for contextual bandits harnessing neural networks to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-01 Parnian Kassraie , Andreas Krause

Sequential learning with feedback graphs is a natural extension of the multi-armed bandit problem where the problem is equipped with an underlying graph structure that provides additional information - playing an action reveals the losses…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-06 Tomáš Kocák , Alexandra Carpentier

We revisit the classic regret-minimization problem in the stochastic multi-armed bandit setting when the arm-distributions are allowed to be heavy-tailed. Regret minimization has been well studied in simpler settings of either bounded…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-09 Shubhada Agrawal , Sandeep Juneja , Wouter M. Koolen

We study the Lipschitz bandit problem, where a learner sequentially maximizes an unknown Lipschitz function $f$ over a domain $\mathcal{X} \subset [0,1]^d$ using noisy pointwise evaluations. Existing regret bounds are either worst-case,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-29 Marius Potfer , Vianney Perchet

We consider optimizing a function network in the noise-free grey-box setting with RKHS function classes, where the exact intermediate results are observable. We assume that the structure of the network is known (but not the underlying…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-14 Zihan Li , Jonathan Scarlett

Machine learning algorithms are often repeatedly applied to problems with similar structure over and over again. We focus on solving a sequence of bandit optimization tasks and develop LIBO, an algorithm which adapts to the environment by…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-06-21 Felix Schur , Parnian Kassraie , Jonas Rothfuss , Andreas Krause

Past research on interactive decision making problems (bandits, reinforcement learning, etc.) mostly focuses on the minimax regret that measures the algorithm's performance on the hardest instance. However, an ideal algorithm should adapt…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-13 Kefan Dong , Tengyu Ma

We study a new type of K-armed bandit problem where the expected return of one arm may depend on the returns of other arms. We present a new algorithm for this general class of problems and show that under certain circumstances it is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-11-12 Tor Lattimore , Remi Munos

We study a nonparametric contextual bandit problem where the expected reward functions belong to a H\"older class with smoothness parameter $\beta$. We show how this interpolates between two extremes that were previously studied in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-09-14 Yichun Hu , Nathan Kallus , Xiaojie Mao

Cascading bandits is a natural and popular model that frames the task of learning to rank from Bernoulli click feedback in a bandit setting. For the case of unstructured rewards, we prove matching upper and lower bounds for the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-11 Daniel Vial , Sujay Sanghavi , Sanjay Shakkottai , R. Srikant

Fast changing states or volatile environments pose a significant challenge to online optimization, which needs to perform rapid adaptation under limited observation. In this paper, we give query and regret optimal bandit algorithms under…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-18 Zhou Lu , Qiuyi Zhang , Xinyi Chen , Fred Zhang , David Woodruff , Elad Hazan

Policy regret is a well established notion of measuring the performance of an online learning algorithm against an adaptive adversary. We study restrictions on the adversary that enable efficient minimization of the \emph{complete policy…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-26 Dhruv Malik , Yuanzhi Li , Aarti Singh

We revisit the problem of online learning with sleeping experts/bandits: in each time step, only a subset of the actions are available for the algorithm to choose from (and learn about). The work of Kleinberg et al. (2010) showed that there…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-27 Ehsan Emamjomeh-Zadeh , Chen-Yu Wei , Haipeng Luo , David Kempe

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