Related papers: PASTA: Pessimistic Assortment Optimization
In this paper, we develop a parameterized proximal point algorithm (P-PPA) for solving a class of separable convex programming problems subject to linear and convex constraints. The proposed algorithm is provable to be globally convergent…
Randomized Greedy Algorithms (RGAs) are interesting approaches to solve problems whose structures are not well understood as well as problems in combinatorial optimization which incorporate the random processes and the greedy algorithms.…
We study the problem of offline policy optimization in stochastic contextual bandit problems, where the goal is to learn a near-optimal policy based on a dataset of decision data collected by a suboptimal behavior policy. Rather than making…
In this work, multiplicative stochasticity is applied to the learning rate of stochastic optimization algorithms, giving rise to stochastic learning-rate schemes. In-expectation theoretical convergence results of Stochastic Gradient Descent…
We propose a framework for online meta-optimization of parameters that govern optimization, called Amortized Proximal Optimization (APO). We first interpret various existing neural network optimizers as approximate stochastic proximal point…
Existing approaches to resource allocation for nowadays stochastic networks are challenged to meet fast convergence and tolerable delay requirements. The present paper leverages online learning advances to facilitate stochastic resource…
In order for an e-commerce platform to maximize its revenue, it must recommend customers items they are most likely to purchase. However, the company often has business constraints on these items, such as the number of each item in stock.…
Bayesian optimisation is a powerful tool to solve expensive black-box problems, but fails when the stationary assumption made on the objective function is strongly violated, which is the case in particular for ill-conditioned or…
Recommendation systems have become ubiquitous in today's online world and are an integral part of practically every e-commerce platform. While traditional recommender systems use customer history, this approach is not feasible in 'cold…
In this paper, we propose a new zero order optimization method called minibatch stochastic three points (MiSTP) method to solve an unconstrained minimization problem in a setting where only an approximation of the objective function…
In this paper, we study the assortment optimization problem faced by many online retailers such as Amazon. We develop a \emph{cascade multinomial logit model}, based on the classic multinomial logit model, to capture the consumers'…
This paper investigates the problem of tracking solutions of stochastic optimization problems with time-varying costs that depend on random variables with decision-dependent distributions. In this context, we propose the use of an online…
We present an algorithm, called the Offset Tree, for learning to make decisions in situations where the payoff of only one choice is observed, rather than all choices. The algorithm reduces this setting to binary classification, allowing…
The last decade witnessed an explosion in the availability of data for operations research applications. Motivated by this growing availability, we propose a novel schema for utilizing data to design uncertainty sets for robust optimization…
In this paper, we consider the contextual variant of the MNL-Bandit problem. More specifically, we consider a dynamic set optimization problem, where a decision-maker offers a subset (assortment) of products to a consumer and observes the…
We explore the fundamental problem of sorting through the lens of learning-augmented algorithms, where algorithms can leverage possibly erroneous predictions to improve their efficiency. We consider two different settings: In the first…
In recent years, deep off-policy actor-critic algorithms have become a dominant approach to reinforcement learning for continuous control. One of the primary drivers of this improved performance is the use of pessimistic value updates to…
We formalize the problem of selecting the optimal set of options for planning as that of computing the smallest set of options so that planning converges in less than a given maximum of value-iteration passes. We first show that the problem…
An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested experimentally for solving stochastic optimization problems in which the decision variables are constrained to satisfy equations defined by deterministic, smooth, and nonlinear functions. It is…
Policy Optimization (PO) is a widely used approach to address continuous control tasks. In this paper, we introduce the notion of mediator feedback that frames PO as an online learning problem over the policy space. The additional available…