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We introduce a latency-aware contextual bandit framework that generalizes the standard contextual bandit problem, where the learner adaptively selects arms and switches decision sets under action delays. In this setting, the learner…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-10 Lai Wei , Ambuj Tewari , Michael A. Cianfrocco

We investigate contextual bandits in the presence of side-observations across arms in order to design recommendation algorithms for users connected via social networks. Users in social networks respond to their friends' activity, and hence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Rahul Singh , Fang Liu , Xin Liu , Ness Shroff

We study the stochastic contextual bandit problem, where the reward is generated from an unknown function with additive noise. No assumption is made about the reward function other than boundedness. We propose a new algorithm, NeuralUCB,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-03 Dongruo Zhou , Lihong Li , Quanquan Gu

Contextual bandit algorithms are essential for solving many real-world interactive machine learning problems. Despite multiple recent successes on statistically and computationally efficient methods, the practical behavior of these…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-06-08 Alberto Bietti , Alekh Agarwal , John Langford

We consider the contextual bandit problem on general action and context spaces, where the learner's rewards depend on their selected actions and an observable context. This generalizes the standard multi-armed bandit to the case where side…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-01-03 Moise Blanchard , Steve Hanneke , Patrick Jaillet

Personalized web services strive to adapt their services (advertisements, news articles, etc) to individual users by making use of both content and user information. Despite a few recent advances, this problem remains challenging for at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-03-05 Lihong Li , Wei Chu , John Langford , Robert E. Schapire

We tackle the problem of online reward maximisation over a large finite set of actions described by their contexts. We focus on the case when the number of actions is too big to sample all of them even once. However we assume that we have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-09-27 Michal Valko , Nathaniel Korda , Remi Munos , Ilias Flaounas , Nelo Cristianini

A central problem in sequential decision making is to develop algorithms that are practical and computationally efficient, yet support the use of flexible, general-purpose models. Focusing on the contextual bandit problem, recent progress…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Yinglun Zhu , Dylan J. Foster , John Langford , Paul Mineiro

Contextual bandit algorithms have transformed modern experimentation by enabling real-time adaptation for personalized treatment and efficient use of data. Yet these advantages create challenges for statistical inference due to adaptivity.…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Yongyi Guo , Ziping Xu

In real-world streaming recommender systems, user preferences often dynamically change over time (e.g., a user may have different preferences during weekdays and weekends). Existing bandit-based streaming recommendation models only consider…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2023-08-17 Chenglei Shen , Xiao Zhang , Wei Wei , Jun Xu

We present a new algorithm for the contextual bandit learning problem, where the learner repeatedly takes one of $K$ actions in response to the observed context, and observes the reward only for that chosen action. Our method assumes access…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-10-15 Alekh Agarwal , Daniel Hsu , Satyen Kale , John Langford , Lihong Li , Robert E. Schapire

Personalization is a crucial aspect of many online experiences. In particular, content ranking is often a key component in delivering sophisticated personalization results. Commonly, supervised learning-to-rank methods are applied, which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-29 Beyza Ermis , Patrick Ernst , Yannik Stein , Giovanni Zappella

Collaborative bandit learning, i.e., bandit algorithms that utilize collaborative filtering techniques to improve sample efficiency in online interactive recommendation, has attracted much research attention as it enjoys the best of both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-16 Chuanhao Li , Qingyun Wu , Hongning Wang

Contextual Multi-Armed Bandits is a well-known and accepted online optimization algorithm, that is used in many Web experiences to tailor content or presentation to users' traffic. Much has been published on theoretical guarantees (e.g.…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2019-07-12 David Abensur , Ivan Balashov , Shaked Bar , Ronny Lempel , Nurit Moscovici , Ilan Orlov , Danny Rosenstein , Ido Tamir

Contextual bandits serve as a fundamental algorithmic framework for optimizing recommendation decisions online. Though extensive attention has been paid to tailoring contextual bandits for recommendation applications, the "herding effects"…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-29 Luyue Xu , Liming Wang , Hong Xie , Mingqiang Zhou

We consider a contextual bandit problem with $S$ contexts and $K$ actions. In each round $t=1,2,\dots$, the learner observes a random context and chooses an action based on its past experience. The learner then observes a random reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-29 Chung-Wei Lee , Qinghua Liu , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Chi Jin , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvári

We study contextual bandit (CB) problems, where the user can sometimes respond with the best action in a given context. Such an interaction arises, for example, in text prediction or autocompletion settings, where a poor suggestion is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-09 Alekh Agarwal , Claudio Gentile , Teodor V. Marinov

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-03-07 Abbas Kazerouni , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Benjamin Van Roy

We consider the problem of contextual bandits with stochastic experts, which is a variation of the traditional stochastic contextual bandit with experts problem. In our problem setting, we assume access to a class of stochastic experts,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-03-04 Rajat Sen , Karthikeyan Shanmugam , Nihal Sharma , Sanjay Shakkottai

Contextual bandit algorithms are commonly used in digital health to recommend personalized treatments. However, to ensure the effectiveness of the treatments, patients are often requested to take actions that have no immediate benefit to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-14 Kyra Gan , Esmaeil Keyvanshokooh , Xueqing Liu , Susan Murphy