Related papers: Estimating Optimal Policy Value in General Linear …
We consider a sequential assortment selection problem where the user choice is given by a multinomial logit (MNL) choice model whose parameters are unknown. In each period, the learning agent observes a $d$-dimensional contextual…
Contextual bandit algorithms are ubiquitous tools for active sequential experimentation in healthcare and the tech industry. They involve online learning algorithms that adaptively learn policies over time to map observed contexts $X_t$ to…
We introduce a distributionally robust approach that enhances the reliability of offline policy evaluation in contextual bandits under general covariate shifts. Our method aims to deliver robust policy evaluation results in the presence of…
With the fast development of big data, learning the optimal decision rule by recursively updating it and making online decisions has been easier than before. We study the online statistical inference of model parameters in a contextual…
We consider the contextual bandit problem where at each time, the agent only has access to a noisy version of the context and the error variance (or an estimator of this variance). This setting is motivated by a wide range of applications…
We study contextual bandits in the presence of a stage-wise constraint when the constraint must be satisfied both with high probability and in expectation. We start with the linear case where both the reward function and the stage-wise…
The statistical framework of Generalized Linear Models (GLM) can be applied to sequential problems involving categorical or ordinal rewards associated, for instance, with clicks, likes or ratings. In the example of binary rewards, logistic…
We address the problem of learning in an online, bandit setting where the learner must repeatedly select among $K$ actions, but only receives partial feedback based on its choices. We establish two new facts: First, using a new algorithm…
We study best-of-both-worlds algorithms for $K$-armed linear contextual bandits. Our algorithms deliver near-optimal regret bounds in both the adversarial and stochastic regimes, without prior knowledge about the environment. In the…
Thompson Sampling is one of the oldest heuristics for multi-armed bandit problems. It is a randomized algorithm based on Bayesian ideas, and has recently generated significant interest after several studies demonstrated it to have better…
We naturally generalize the on-line graph prediction problem to a version of stochastic contextual bandit problems where contexts are vertices in a graph and the structure of the graph provides information on the similarity of contexts.…
We study contextual bandits in the stochastic i.i.d.\ setting, where a learner observes contexts drawn from an unknown distribution, selects actions from a finite set $A$, and aims to identify an approximately optimal policy from a given…
In the stochastic contextual low-rank matrix bandit problem, the expected reward of an action is given by the inner product between the action's feature matrix and some fixed, but initially unknown $d_1$ by $d_2$ matrix $\Theta^*$ with rank…
We introduce a new stochastic smoothing perspective to study adversarial contextual bandit problems. We propose a general algorithm template that represents random perturbation based algorithms and identify several perturbation…
We consider the problem where M agents collaboratively interact with an instance of a stochastic K-armed contextual bandit, where K>>M. The goal of the agents is to simultaneously minimize the cumulative regret over all the agents over a…
We propose a linear contextual bandit algorithm with $O(\sqrt{dT\log T})$ regret bound, where $d$ is the dimension of contexts and $T$ isthe time horizon. Our proposed algorithm is equipped with a novel estimator in which exploration is…
Modern systems, such as digital platforms and service systems, increasingly rely on contextual bandits for online decision-making; however, their deployment can inadvertently create unfair exposure among arms, undermining long-term platform…
We propose the first contextual bandit algorithm that is parameter-free, efficient, and optimal in terms of dynamic regret. Specifically, our algorithm achieves dynamic regret $\mathcal{O}(\min\{\sqrt{ST},…
The cross-learning contextual bandit problem with graphical feedback has recently attracted significant attention. In this setting, there is a contextual bandit with a feedback graph over the arms, and pulling an arm reveals the loss for…
Many physical systems have underlying safety considerations that require that the strategy deployed ensures the satisfaction of a set of constraints. Further, often we have only partial information on the state of the system. We study the…