Related papers: Bayesian Regret Minimization in Offline Bandits

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…

The analysis of online least squares estimation is at the heart of many stochastic sequential decision making problems. We employ tools from the self-normalized processes to provide a simple and self-contained proof of a tail bound of a…

In this paper we propose a novel experimental design-based algorithm to minimize regret in online stochastic linear and combinatorial bandits. While existing literature tends to focus on optimism-based algorithms--which have been shown to…

In this paper, we consider the multi-armed bandit problem with high-dimensional features. First, we prove a minimax lower bound, $\mathcal{O}\big((\log d)^{\frac{\alpha+1}{2}}T^{\frac{1-\alpha}{2}}+\log T\big)$, for the cumulative regret,…

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…

This paper is in the field of stochastic Multi-Armed Bandits (MABs), i.e. those sequential selection techniques able to learn online using only the feedback given by the chosen option (a.k.a. $arm$). We study a particular case of the rested…

We propose a simple model selection approach for algorithms in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. As opposed to prior work that (implicitly) assumes knowledge of the optimal regret, we only require that each base…

Bayesian bandit algorithms with approximate Bayesian inference have been widely used in real-world applications. However, there is a large discrepancy between the superior practical performance of these approaches and their theoretical…

We consider a stochastic multi-armed bandit setting and study the problem of constrained regret minimization over a given time horizon. Each arm is associated with an unknown, possibly multi-dimensional distribution, and the merit of an arm…

Kernelized bandits, also known as Bayesian optimization (BO), has been a prevalent method for optimizing complicated black-box reward functions. Various BO algorithms have been theoretically shown to enjoy upper bounds on their cumulative…

I introduce and analyse an anytime version of the Optimally Confident UCB (OCUCB) algorithm designed for minimising the cumulative regret in finite-armed stochastic bandits with subgaussian noise. The new algorithm is simple, intuitive (in…

Bayesian optimization usually assumes that a Bayesian prior is given. However, the strong theoretical guarantees in Bayesian optimization are often regrettably compromised in practice because of unknown parameters in the prior. In this…

We address online linear optimization problems when the possible actions of the decision maker are represented by binary vectors. The regret of the decision maker is the difference between her realized loss and the best loss she would have…

Bayesian optimization is a framework for global search via maximum a posteriori updates rather than simulated annealing, and has gained prominence for decision-making under uncertainty. In this work, we cast Bayesian optimization as a…

I present the first algorithm for stochastic finite-armed bandits that simultaneously enjoys order-optimal problem-dependent regret and worst-case regret. Besides the theoretical results, the new algorithm is simple, efficient and…

We study the linear contextual bandit problem with finite action sets. When the problem dimension is $d$, the time horizon is $T$, and there are $n \leq 2^{d/2}$ candidate actions per time period, we (1) show that the minimax expected…

We develop a new approach to obtaining high probability regret bounds for online learning with bandit feedback against an adaptive adversary. While existing approaches all require carefully constructing optimistic and biased loss…

Safety is a desirable property that can immensely increase the applicability of learning algorithms in real-world decision-making problems. It is much easier for a company to deploy an algorithm that is safe, i.e., guaranteed to perform at…

Conservative Contextual Bandits (CCBs) address safety in sequential decision making by requiring that an agent's policy, along with minimizing regret, also satisfies a safety constraint: the performance is not worse than a baseline policy…

In many fields such as digital marketing, healthcare, finance, and robotics, it is common to have a well-tested and reliable baseline policy running in production (e.g., a recommender system). Nonetheless, the baseline policy is often…