Related papers: Thompson Sampling for (Combinatorial) Pure Explora…
In this work we first show that the classical Thompson sampling algorithm for multi-arm bandits is differentially private as-is, without any modification. We provide per-round privacy guarantees as a function of problem parameters and show…
We study a widely used Bayesian optimization method, Gaussian process Thompson sampling (GP-TS), under the assumption that the objective function is a sample path from a GP. Compared with the GP upper confidence bound (GP-UCB) with…
We study a specific \textit{combinatorial pure exploration stochastic bandit problem} where the learner aims at finding the set of arms whose means are above a given threshold, up to a given precision, and \textit{for a fixed time horizon}.…
In the combinatorial semi-bandit (CSB) problem, a player selects an action from a combinatorial action set and observes feedback from the base arms included in the action. While CSB is widely applicable to combinatorial optimization…
We consider a finite-armed structured bandit problem in which mean rewards of different arms are known functions of a common hidden parameter $\theta^*$. Since we do not place any restrictions of these functions, the problem setting…
Thompson sampling is a widely used strategy for contextual bandits: at each round, it samples a reward function from a Bayesian posterior and acts greedily under that sample. Prior-data fitted networks (PFNs), such as TabPFN v2+ and TabICL…
Conducting randomized experiments in education settings raises the question of how we can use machine learning techniques to improve educational interventions. Using Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) algorithms like Thompson Sampling (TS) in…
This paper presents a new approach for batch Bayesian Optimization (BO) called Thompson Sampling-Regret to Sigma Ratio directed sampling (TS-RSR), where we sample a new batch of actions by minimizing a Thompson Sampling approximation of a…
We present a modular approach to reinforcement learning that uses a Bayesian representation of the uncertainty over models. The approach, BOSS (Best of Sampled Set), drives exploration by sampling multiple models from the posterior and…
In this paper, we introduce and analyze a variant of the Thompson sampling (TS) algorithm for contextual bandits. At each round, traditional TS requires samples from the current posterior distribution, which is usually intractable. To…
Bayesian optimization devolves the global optimization of a costly objective function to the global optimization of a sequence of acquisition functions. This inner-loop optimization can be catastrophically difficult if it involves posterior…
This work addresses the problem of regret minimization in non-stochastic multi-armed bandit problems, focusing on performance guarantees that hold with high probability. Such results are rather scarce in the literature since proving them…
We study a cooperative multi-agent multi-armed bandits with M agents and K arms. The goal of the agents is to minimized the cumulative regret. We adapt a traditional Thompson Sampling algoirthm under the distributed setting. However, with…
Classical evolutionary approaches for multiobjective optimization are quite accurate but incur a lot of queries to the objectives; this can be prohibitive when objectives are expensive oracles. A sample-efficient approach to solving…
We revisit combinatorial Thompson sampling (CTS) for semi-bandits with sleeping arms, where arm availability varies over time and actions must satisfy combinatorial constraints, as in wireless mesh routing with fluctuating link…
We study a posterior sampling approach to efficient exploration in constrained reinforcement learning. Alternatively to existing algorithms, we propose two simple algorithms that are more efficient statistically, simpler to implement and…
We study the preference-based pure exploration problem for bandits with vector-valued rewards. The rewards are ordered using a (given) preference cone $\mathcal{C}$ and our goal is to identify the set of Pareto optimal arms. First, to…
Sign-Perturbed Sum (SPS) is a powerful finite-sample system identification algorithm which can construct confidence regions for the true data generating system with exact coverage probabilities, for any finite sample size. SPS was developed…
Thompson sampling has emerged as an effective heuristic for a broad range of online decision problems. In its basic form, the algorithm requires computing and sampling from a posterior distribution over models, which is tractable only for…
UCT, a state-of-the art algorithm for Monte Carlo tree sampling (MCTS), is based on UCB, a sampling policy for the Multi-armed Bandit Problem (MAB) that minimizes the accumulated regret. However, MCTS differs from MAB in that only the final…