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This paper introduces and addresses a wide class of stochastic bandit problems where the function mapping the arm to the corresponding reward exhibits some known structural properties. Most existing structures (e.g. linear, Lipschitz,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-02 Richard Combes , Stefan Magureanu , Alexandre Proutiere

We study the challenging exploration incentive problem in both bandit and reinforcement learning, where the rewards are scale-free and potentially unbounded, driven by real-world scenarios and differing from existing work. Past works in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Mengfan Xu , Diego Klabjan

Thompson sampling is one of the most widely used algorithms for many online decision problems, due to its simplicity in implementation and superior empirical performance over other state-of-the-art methods. Despite its popularity and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-02 Tianyuan Jin , Pan Xu , Jieming Shi , Xiaokui Xiao , Quanquan Gu

We develop the first general semi-bandit algorithm that simultaneously achieves $\mathcal{O}(\log T)$ regret for stochastic environments and $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret for adversarial environments without knowledge of the regime or the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-27 Julian Zimmert , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei

Thompson Sampling provides an efficient technique to introduce prior knowledge in the multi-armed bandit problem, along with providing remarkable empirical performance. In this paper, we revisit the Thompson Sampling algorithm under rewards…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-09 Abhimanyu Dubey , Alex Pentland

We consider the problem of learning in episodic finite-horizon Markov decision processes with an unknown transition function, bandit feedback, and adversarial losses. We propose an efficient algorithm that achieves…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-03 Chi Jin , Tiancheng Jin , Haipeng Luo , Suvrit Sra , Tiancheng Yu

We develop a novel and generic algorithm for the adversarial multi-armed bandit problem (or more generally the combinatorial semi-bandit problem). When instantiated differently, our algorithm achieves various new data-dependent regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-08 Chen-Yu Wei , Haipeng Luo

We study algorithms for online linear optimization in Hilbert spaces, focusing on the case where the player is unconstrained. We develop a novel characterization of a large class of minimax algorithms, recovering, and even improving,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-05-22 H. Brendan McMahan , Francesco Orabona

In model-based solution approaches to the problem of learning in an unknown environment, exploring to learn the model parameters takes a toll on the regret. The optimal performance with respect to regret or PAC bounds is achievable, if the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-10-13 P. Prasanna , Sarath Chandar , Balaraman Ravindran

We consider the problem of controlling an unknown linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) system consisting of multiple subsystems connected over a network. Our goal is to minimize and quantify the regret (i.e. loss in performance) of our strategy…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-08-19 Sagar Sudhakara , Aditya Mahajan , Ashutosh Nayyar , Yi Ouyang

We introduce Cautious Optimism, a framework for substantially faster regularized learning in general games. Cautious Optimism, as a variant of Optimism, adaptively controls the learning pace in a dynamic, non-monotone manner to accelerate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-17 Ashkan Soleymani , Georgios Piliouras , Gabriele Farina

Thompson Sampling (TS) has attracted a lot of interest due to its good empirical performance, in particular in the computational advertising. Though successful, the tools for its performance analysis appeared only recently. In this paper,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Tomas Kocak , Michal Valko , Remi Munos , Shipra Agrawal

We improve the efficiency of algorithms for stochastic \emph{combinatorial semi-bandits}. In most interesting problems, state-of-the-art algorithms take advantage of structural properties of rewards, such as \emph{independence}. However,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-24 Pierre Perrault , Vianney Perchet , Michal Valko

Consider a scenario where a player chooses an action in each round $t$ out of $T$ rounds and observes the incurred cost after a delay of $d_{t}$ rounds. The cost functions and the delay sequence are chosen by an adversary. We show that in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-16 Ilai Bistritz , Zhengyuan Zhou , Xi Chen , Nicholas Bambos , Jose Blanchet

This paper studies the optimistic variant of Fictitious Play for learning in two-player zero-sum games. While it is known that Optimistic FTRL -- a regularized algorithm with a bounded stepsize parameter -- obtains constant regret in this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-15 John Lazarsfeld , Georgios Piliouras , Ryann Sim , Stratis Skoulakis

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a ubiquitous decision-making problem that exemplifies exploration-exploitation tradeoff. Standard formulations exclude risk in decision making. Risknotably complicates the basic reward-maximising…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-17 Ming Liang Ang , Eloise Y. Y. Lim , Joel Q. L. Chang

Motivated by the pressing need for efficient optimization in online recommender systems, we revisit the cascading bandit model proposed by Kveton et al. (2015). While Thompson sampling (TS) algorithms have been shown to be empirically…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-18 Zixin Zhong , Wang Chi Cheung , Vincent Y. F. Tan

We study the problem of online multi-task learning where the tasks are performed within similar but not necessarily identical multi-armed bandit environments. In particular, we study how a learner can improve its overall performance across…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-20 Zhi Wang , Chicheng Zhang , Kamalika Chaudhuri

Thompson Sampling has been widely used for contextual bandit problems due to the flexibility of its modeling power. However, a general theory for this class of methods in the frequentist setting is still lacking. In this paper, we present a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-05 Tong Zhang

We examine the problem of regret minimization when the learner is involved in a continuous game with other optimizing agents: in this case, if all players follow a no-regret algorithm, it is possible to achieve significantly lower regret…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-20 Yu-Guan Hsieh , Kimon Antonakopoulos , Volkan Cevher , Panayotis Mertikopoulos