Related papers: Leveraging Demonstrations to Improve Online Learni…
This paper considers an online reinforcement learning algorithm that leverages pre-collected data (passive memory) from the environment for online interaction. We show that using passive memory improves performance and further provide…
We study how to learn optimal interventions sequentially given causal information represented as a causal graph along with associated conditional distributions. Causal modeling is useful in real world problems like online advertisement…
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…
Directed Evolution (DE), a landmark wet-lab method originated in 1960s, enables discovery of novel protein designs via evolving a population of candidate sequences. Recent advances in biotechnology has made it possible to collect…
Most bandit algorithms assume that the reward variances or their upper bounds are known, and that they are the same for all arms. This naturally leads to suboptimal performance and higher regret due to variance overestimation. On the other…
Under data distributions which may be heavy-tailed, many stochastic gradient-based learning algorithms are driven by feedback queried at points with almost no performance guarantees on their own. Here we explore a modified "anytime…
Virtual screening of large compound libraries to identify potential hit candidates is one of the earliest steps in drug discovery. As the size of commercially available compound collections grows exponentially to the scale of billions,…
In the setting of stochastic online learning with undirected feedback graphs, Lykouris et al. (2020) previously analyzed the pseudo-regret of the upper confidence bound-based algorithm UCB-N and the Thompson Sampling-based algorithm TS-N.…
We present an online model-based reinforcement learning algorithm suitable for controlling complex robotic systems directly in the real world. Unlike prevailing sim-to-real pipelines that rely on extensive offline simulation and model-free…
This paper is motivated by recent research in the $d$-dimensional stochastic linear bandit literature, which has revealed an unsettling discrepancy: algorithms like Thompson sampling and Greedy demonstrate promising empirical performance,…
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…
In the field of reinforcement learning there has been recent progress towards safety and high-confidence bounds on policy performance. However, to our knowledge, no practical methods exist for determining high-confidence policy performance…
This note introduce three Bayesian style Multi-armed bandit algorithms: Information-directed sampling, Thompson Sampling and Generalized Thompson Sampling. The goal is to give an intuitive explanation for these three algorithms and their…
We consider online learning problems where the aim is to achieve regret which is efficient in the sense that it is the same order as the lowest regret amongst K experts. This is a substantially stronger requirement that achieving…
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…
The recent success of machine learning models, especially large-scale classifiers and language models, relies heavily on training with massive data. These data are often collected from online sources. This raises serious concerns about the…
Most bandit algorithm designs are purely theoretical. Therefore, they have strong regret guarantees, but also are often too conservative in practice. In this work, we pioneer the idea of algorithm design by minimizing the empirical Bayes…
Bayesian bandit algorithms with approximate Bayesian inference have been widely used in real-world applications. Despite the superior practical performance, their theoretical justification is less investigated in the literature, especially…
We investigate finite stochastic partial monitoring, which is a general model for sequential learning with limited feedback. While Thompson sampling is one of the most promising algorithms on a variety of online decision-making problems,…
In model-based solution approaches to the problem of learning in an unknown environment, exploring to learn the model parameters takes a toll on the regret. The optimal performance with respect to regret or PAC bounds is achievable, if the…