Related papers: Bandit Theory and Thompson Sampling-Guided Directe…
Differential Evolution (DE) proved to be one of the most successful evolutionary algorithms for global optimization purposes in continuous problems. The core operator in DE is mutation which can provide the algorithm with both exploration…
Differential evolution (DE) is a well-known type of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Similarly to other EA variants it can suffer from small populations and loose diversity too quickly. This paper presents a new approach to mitigate this…
Differential Evolution (DE) is a widely used evolutionary algorithm for black-box optimization problems. However, in modern DE implementations, a major challenge lies in the limited population diversity caused by the fixed population size…
We establish strong laws of large numbers and central limit theorems for the regret of two of the most popular bandit algorithms: Thompson sampling and UCB. Here, our characterizations of the regret distribution complement the…
Thompson Sampling, one of the oldest heuristics for solving multi-armed bandits, has recently been shown to demonstrate state-of-the-art performance. The empirical success has led to great interests in theoretical understanding of this…
The remarkable success of pretrain-then-finetune paradigm has led to a proliferation of available pre-trained models for vision tasks. This surge presents a significant challenge in efficiently choosing the most suitable pre-trained models…
Thompson sampling is a heuristic algorithm for the multi-armed bandit problem which has a long tradition in machine learning. The algorithm has a Bayesian spirit in the sense that it selects arms based on posterior samples of reward…
This paper presents a new dynamic approach to experiment design in settings where, due to interference or other concerns, experimental units are coarse. `Region-split' experiments on online platforms are one example of such a setting. The…
Recent growing adoption of experimentation in practice has led to a surge of attention to multiarmed bandits as a technique to reduce the opportunity cost of online experiments. In this setting, a decision-maker sequentially chooses among a…
Thompson Sampling has been widely used for contextual bandit problems due to the flexibility of its modeling power. However, a general theory for this class of methods in the frequentist setting is still lacking. In this paper, we present a…
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have emerged as a powerful framework for optimization, especially for black-box optimization. Existing evolutionary algorithms struggle to comprehend and effectively utilize task-specific information for…
Thompson sampling has proven effective across a wide range of stationary bandit environments. However, as we demonstrate in this paper, it can perform poorly when applied to non-stationary environments. We attribute such failures to the…
Motivated by the concept of satisficing in decision-making, we consider the problem of satisficing regret minimization in bandit optimization. In this setting, the learner aims at selecting satisficing arms (arms with mean reward exceeding…
We study multi-armed bandit problems with graph feedback, in which the decision maker is allowed to observe the neighboring actions of the chosen action, in a setting where the graph may vary over time and is never fully revealed to the…
Stochastic sparse linear bandits offer a practical model for high-dimensional online decision-making problems and have a rich information-regret structure. In this work we explore the use of information-directed sampling (IDS), which…
The stochastic multi-armed bandit problem is a well-known model for studying the exploration-exploitation trade-off. It has significant possible applications in adaptive clinical trials, which allow for dynamic changes in the treatment…
We revisit the study of optimal regret rates in bandit combinatorial optimization---a fundamental framework for sequential decision making under uncertainty that abstracts numerous combinatorial prediction problems. We prove that the…
Test-time training (TTT) adapts language models through gradient-based updates at inference. But is adaptation the right strategy? We study compute-optimal test-time strategies for verifiable execution-grounded (VEG) tasks, domains like GPU…
Although real-coded differential evolution (DE) algorithms can perform well on continuous optimization problems (CoOPs), it is still a challenging task to design an efficient binary-coded DE algorithm. Inspired by the learning mechanism of…
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…