Related papers: Off-Policy Evaluation for Large Action Spaces via …

In this work, we consider the problem of estimating a behaviour policy for use in Off-Policy Policy Evaluation (OPE) when the true behaviour policy is unknown. Via a series of empirical studies, we demonstrate how accurate OPE is strongly…

We study the problem of off-policy evaluation for slate bandits, for the typical case in which the logging policy factorizes over the slots of the slate. We slightly depart from the existing literature by taking Bayes risk as the criterion…

Policy-based methods have achieved remarkable success in solving challenging reinforcement learning problems. Among these methods, off-policy policy gradient methods are particularly important due to that they can benefit from off-policy…

Even when unable to run experiments, practitioners can evaluate prospective policies, using previously logged data. However, while the bandits literature has adopted a diverse set of objectives, most research on off-policy evaluation to…

We propose the first boosting algorithm for off-policy learning from logged bandit feedback. Unlike existing boosting methods for supervised learning, our algorithm directly optimizes an estimate of the policy's expected reward. We analyze…

Learning effective contextual-bandit policies from past actions of a deployed system is highly desirable in many settings (e.g. voice assistants, recommendation, search), since it enables the reuse of large amounts of log data.…

Motivated by the many real-world applications of reinforcement learning (RL) that require safe-policy iterations, we consider the problem of off-policy evaluation (OPE) -- the problem of evaluating a new policy using the historical data…

Off-Policy Evaluation (OPE) is employed to assess the potential impact of a hypothetical policy using logged contextual bandit feedback, which is crucial in areas such as personalized medicine and recommender systems, where online…

We offer an experimental benchmark and empirical study for off-policy policy evaluation (OPE) in reinforcement learning, which is a key problem in many safety critical applications. Given the increasing interest in deploying learning-based…

Many reinforcement learning algorithms, particularly those that rely on return estimates for policy improvement, can suffer from poor sample efficiency and training instability due to high-variance return estimates. In this paper we…

Off-policy policy evaluation (OPE) estimates the outcome of a new policy using historical data collected from a different policy. However, existing OPE methods cannot handle cases when the new policy introduces novel actions. This issue…

Evaluating a policy by deploying it in the real world can be risky and costly. Off-policy policy evaluation (OPE) algorithms use historical data collected from running a previous policy to evaluate a new policy, which provides a means for…

We study the offline contextual bandit problem, where we aim to acquire an optimal policy using observational data. However, this data usually contains two deficiencies: (i) some variables that confound actions are not observed, and (ii)…

We consider off-policy evaluation (OPE) in continuous treatment settings, such as personalized dose-finding. In OPE, one aims to estimate the mean outcome under a new treatment decision rule using historical data generated by a different…

Offline policy learning (OPL) leverages existing data collected a priori for policy optimization without any active exploration. Despite the prevalence and recent interest in this problem, its theoretical and algorithmic foundations in…

This work investigates the offline formulation of the contextual bandit problem, where the goal is to leverage past interactions collected under a behavior policy to evaluate, select, and learn new, potentially better-performing, policies.…

Improving the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning algorithms requires effective exploration. Following the principle of $\textit{optimism in the face of uncertainty}$ (OFU), we train a separate exploration policy to maximize the…

In many domains, the exploration process of reinforcement learning will be too costly as it requires trying out suboptimal policies, resulting in a need for off-policy evaluation, in which a target policy is evaluated based on data…

We address policy learning with logged data in contextual bandits. Current offline-policy learning algorithms are mostly based on inverse propensity score (IPS) weighting requiring the logging policy to have \emph{full support} i.e. a…

This paper addresses the problem of policy selection in domains with abundant logged data, but with a restricted interaction budget. Solving this problem would enable safe evaluation and deployment of offline reinforcement learning policies…