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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 consider contextual linear bandits over networks, a class of sequential decision-making problems where learning occurs simultaneously across multiple locations and the reward distributions share structural similarities while also…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Chuyun Deng , Huiwen Jia

In this work, we develop linear bandit algorithms that automatically adapt to different environments. By plugging a novel loss estimator into the optimization problem that characterizes the instance-optimal strategy, our first algorithm not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Mengxiao Zhang , Xiaojin Zhang

Model selection in supervised learning provides costless guarantees as if the model that best balances bias and variance was known a priori. We study the feasibility of similar guarantees for cumulative regret minimization in the stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-25 Sanath Kumar Krishnamurthy , Adrienne Margaret Propp , Susan Athey

We consider model selection in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. Given a set of base learning algorithms, an effective model selection strategy adapts to the best learning algorithm in an online fashion. We show that by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Aldo Pacchiano , My Phan

We study the linear contextual bandit problem in the presence of adversarial corruption, where the reward at each round is corrupted by an adversary, and the corruption level (i.e., the sum of corruption magnitudes over the horizon) is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-12 Jiafan He , Dongruo Zhou , Tong Zhang , Quanquan Gu

We study online learning in contextual pay-per-click auctions where at each of the $T$ rounds, the learner receives some context along with a set of ads and needs to make an estimate on their click-through rate (CTR) in order to run a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-10 Mengxiao Zhang , Haipeng Luo

The Colonel Blotto game is a renowned resource allocation problem with a long-standing literature in game theory (almost 100 years). However, its scope of application is still restricted by the lack of studies on the incomplete-information…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-09-12 Dong Quan Vu , Patrick Loiseau , Alonso Silva

Recent works have shown a reduction from contextual bandits to online regression under a realizability assumption [Foster and Rakhlin, 2020, Foster and Krishnamurthy, 2021]. In this work, we investigate the use of neural networks for such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-13 Rohan Deb , Yikun Ban , Shiliang Zuo , Jingrui He , Arindam Banerjee

The contextual bandit framework is widely used to solve sequential optimization problems where the reward of each decision depends on auxiliary context variables. In settings such as medicine, business, and engineering, the decision maker…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-17 Kevin Li , Eric Laber

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)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-21 Siyu Chen , Yitan Wang , Zhaoran Wang , Zhuoran Yang

In many bandit problems, the maximal reward achievable by a policy is often unknown in advance. We consider the problem of estimating the optimal policy value in the sublinear data regime before the optimal policy is even learnable. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-21 Jonathan N. Lee , Weihao Kong , Aldo Pacchiano , Vidya Muthukumar , Emma Brunskill

We consider a contextual bandit problem with a combinatorial action set and time-varying base arm availability. At the beginning of each round, the agent observes the set of available base arms and their contexts and then selects an action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-26 Andi Nika , Sepehr Elahi , Cem Tekin

A latent bandit problem is one in which the learning agent knows the arm reward distributions conditioned on an unknown discrete latent state. The primary goal of the agent is to identify the latent state, after which it can act optimally.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Joey Hong , Branislav Kveton , Manzil Zaheer , Yinlam Chow , Amr Ahmed , Craig Boutilier

Most bandit policies are designed to either minimize regret in any problem instance, making very few assumptions about the underlying environment, or in a Bayesian sense, assuming a prior distribution over environment parameters. The former…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-07 Branislav Kveton , Martin Mladenov , Chih-Wei Hsu , Manzil Zaheer , Csaba Szepesvari , Craig Boutilier

We consider the linear contextual bandit problem with resource consumption, in addition to reward generation. In each round, the outcome of pulling an arm is a reward as well as a vector of resource consumptions. The expected values of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-07-12 Shipra Agrawal , Nikhil R. Devanur

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

We study a nonparametric contextual bandit problem where the expected reward functions belong to a H\"older class with smoothness parameter $\beta$. We show how this interpolates between two extremes that were previously studied in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-09-14 Yichun Hu , Nathan Kallus , Xiaojie Mao

Pandora's Box is a fundamental stochastic optimization problem, where the decision-maker must find a good alternative while minimizing the search cost of exploring the value of each alternative. In the original formulation, it is assumed…

We study the benefits of sparsity in nonparametric contextual bandit problems, in which the set of candidate features is countably or uncountably infinite. Our contribution is two-fold. First, using a novel reduction to sequences of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-16 Hamish Flynn , Julia Olkhovskaya , Paul Rognon-Vael