Related papers: Regret theory, Allais' Paradox, and Savage's omele…
We provide and axiomatize a representation for preferences over lotteries that generalizes the expected utility model. Since the representation uses different utility functions to evaluate different lotteries, the preferences can be…
We prove that a classic sub-Gaussian mixture proposed by Robbins in a stochastic setting actually satisfies a path-wise (deterministic) regret bound. For every path in a natural ``Ville event'' $\mathcal E_\alpha$, this regret till time $T$…
Desirability can be understood as an extension of Anscombe and Aumann's Bayesian decision theory to sets of expected utilities. At the core of desirability lies an assumption of linearity of the scale in which rewards are measured. It is a…
Regret is the cost of uncertainty in algorithmic decision-making. Quantifying regret typically requires computationally expensive simulation via Sample Average Approximation (SAA), with complexity $\mathcal{O}(Bn^{2}d^{3})$ in the number of…
In two-player zero-sum games, the learning dynamic based on optimistic Hedge achieves one of the best-known regret upper bounds among strongly-uncoupled learning dynamics. With an appropriately chosen learning rate, the social and…
We derive an alternative proof for the regret of Thompson sampling (\ts) in the stochastic linear bandit setting. While we obtain a regret bound of order $\widetilde{O}(d^{3/2}\sqrt{T})$ as in previous results, the proof sheds new light on…
We show that Optimistic Hedge -- a common variant of multiplicative-weights-updates with recency bias -- attains ${\rm poly}(\log T)$ regret in multi-player general-sum games. In particular, when every player of the game uses Optimistic…
We consider the classical question of predicting binary sequences and study the {\em optimal} algorithms for obtaining the best possible regret and payoff functions for this problem. The question turns out to be also equivalent to the…
The principle that rational agents should maximize expected utility or choiceworthiness is intuitively plausible in many ordinary cases of decision-making under uncertainty. But it is less plausible in cases of extreme, low-probability risk…
How can we extract theoretical insights from machine learning algorithms? We take a familiar lesson: researchers often turn their intuitions into theoretical insights by constructing "anomalies" -- specific examples highlighting…
We consider an online learning problem on a continuum. A decision maker is given a compact feasible set $S$, and is faced with the following sequential problem: at iteration~$t$, the decision maker chooses a distribution $x^{(t)} \in…
We study the problem of adaptive control of the stochastic linear quadratic regulator (LQR) with constraints that must be satisfied at every time step. Prior work on the multidimensional problem has shown $\tilde{O}(T^{2/3})$ regret and…
We consider combinatorial multi-item markets and propose the notion of a $\Delta$-regret Walras equilibrium, which is an allocation of items to players and a set of item prices that achieve the following goals: prices clear the market, the…
We derive a conditional version of the classical regret-capacity theorem. This result can be used in universal prediction to find lower bounds on the minimal batch regret, which is a recently introduced generalization of the average regret,…
We consider the problem of sequential hypothesis testing by betting. For a general class of composite testing problems -- which include bounded mean testing, equal mean testing for bounded random tuples, and some key ingredients of…
A classic problem in statistics is the estimation of the expectation of random variables from samples. This gives rise to the tightly connected problems of deriving concentration inequalities and confidence sequences, that is confidence…
Theorem 1 in Bikhchandani & Segal (2011; Theoretical Economics) suggests that a complete, transitive, monotonic, and continuous preference is regret based if and only if it is expected utility. Their Proposition 1 suggests that transitivity…
One way to make decisions under uncertainty is to select an optimal option from a possible range of options, by maximizing the expected utilities derived from a probability model. However, under severe uncertainty, identifying precise…
In modern advertising platforms, learning algorithms are deployed by budget-constrained bidders to maximize their accumulated value. These algorithms often offer classical utility guarantees like no-regret, i.e., the agent's utility is at…
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…