Related papers: Approximate Function Evaluation via Multi-Armed Ba…
We study the problem of global maximization of a function f given a finite number of evaluations perturbed by noise. We consider a very weak assumption on the function, namely that it is locally smooth (in some precise sense) with respect…
We consider the maximization of a submodular objective function $f:2^U\to\mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}$, where the objective $f$ is not accessed as a value oracle but instead subject to noisy queries. We introduce a versatile adaptive sampling…
We study a non-parametric multi-armed bandit problem with stochastic covariates, where a key complexity driver is the smoothness of payoff functions with respect to covariates. Previous studies have focused on deriving minimax-optimal…
We consider the problem of estimating an unknown function f* and its partial derivatives from a noisy data set of n observations, where we make no assumptions about f* except that it is smooth in the sense that it has square integrable…
In the infinite-armed bandit problem, each arm's average reward is sampled from an unknown distribution, and each arm can be sampled further to obtain noisy estimates of the average reward of that arm. Prior work focuses on identifying the…
We study the stochastic noisy bandit problem with an unknown reward function $f^*$ in a known function class $\mathcal{F}$. Formally, a model $M$ maps arms $\pi$ to a probability distribution $M(\pi)$ of reward. A model class $\mathcal{M}$…
Many stochastic optimization algorithms work by estimating the gradient of the cost function on the fly by sampling datapoints uniformly at random from a training set. However, the estimator might have a large variance, which inadvertently…
Sampling from distributions to find the one with the largest mean arises in a broad range of applications, and it can be mathematically modeled as a multi-armed bandit problem in which each distribution is associated with an arm. This paper…
Approximating a function $f(x)$ on $[-1,1]$ based on $N+1$ samples is a classical problem in numerical analysis. If the samples come with heteroskedastic noise depending on $x$ of variance $\sigma(x)^2$, an $O(N\log N)$ algorithm for this…
Smooth functions on graphs have wide applications in manifold and semi-supervised learning. In this work, we study a bandit problem where the payoffs of arms are smooth on a graph. This framework is suitable for solving online learning…
Submodular optimization with bandit feedback has recently been studied in a variety of contexts. In a number of real-world applications such as diversified recommender systems and data summarization, the submodular function exhibits…
We consider the problem of adaptive stratified sampling for Monte Carlo integration of a differentiable function given a finite number of evaluations to the function. We construct a sampling scheme that samples more often in regions where…
Consider an open set $\mathbb{D}\subseteq\mathbb{R}^n$, equipped with a probability measure $\mu$. An important characteristic of a smooth function $f:\mathbb{D}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ is its \emph{second-moment matrix} $\Sigma_{\mu}:=\int…
Contextual bandits are widely-used in the study of learning-based control policies for finite action spaces. While the problem is well-studied for bandits with perfectly observed context vectors, little is known about the case of…
We study the classical problem of approximating a non-decreasing function $f: \mathcal{X} \to \mathcal{Y}$ in $L^p(\mu)$ norm by sequentially querying its values, for known compact real intervals $\mathcal{X}$, $\mathcal{Y}$ and a known…
In this paper, we study the problem of estimating uniformly well the mean values of several distributions given a finite budget of samples. If the variance of the distributions were known, one could design an optimal sampling strategy by…
Multi-time-scale stochastic approximation is an iterative algorithm for finding the fixed point of a set of $N$ coupled operators given their noisy samples. It has been observed that due to the coupling between the decision variables and…
In bandit best-arm identification, an algorithm is tasked with finding the arm with highest mean reward with a specified accuracy as fast as possible. We study multi-fidelity best-arm identification, in which the algorithm can choose to…
We address the problem of learning an unknown smooth function and its derivatives from noisy pointwise evaluations under the supremum norm. While classical nonparametric regression provides a strong theoretical foundation, traditional…
Consider a nonparametric contextual multi-arm bandit problem where each arm $a \in [K]$ is associated to a nonparametric reward function $f_a: [0,1] \to \mathbb{R}$ mapping from contexts to the expected reward. Suppose that there is a large…