English
Related papers

Related papers: Causal Bandits with General Causal Models and Inte…

200 papers

We consider the problem of finitely parameterized multi-armed bandits where the model of the underlying stochastic environment can be characterized based on a common unknown parameter. The true parameter is unknown to the learning agent.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-10 Kishan Panaganti , Dileep Kalathil

Many applications require optimizing an unknown, noisy function that is expensive to evaluate. We formalize this task as a multi-armed bandit problem, where the payoff function is either sampled from a Gaussian process (GP) or has low RKHS…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-03-13 Niranjan Srinivas , Andreas Krause , Sham M. Kakade , Matthias Seeger

This paper presents a new algorithm for neural contextual bandits (CBs) that addresses the challenge of delayed reward feedback, where the reward for a chosen action is revealed after a random, unknown delay. This scenario is common in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-17 Mohammadali Moghimi , Sharu Theresa Jose , Shana Moothedath

In this paper, we study Combinatorial Semi-Bandits (CSB) that is an extension of classic Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB) under Differential Privacy (DP) and stronger Local Differential Privacy (LDP) setting. Since the server receives more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-06 Xiaoyu Chen , Kai Zheng , Zixin Zhou , Yunchang Yang , Wei Chen , Liwei Wang

The combinatorial multi-armed bandit (CMAB) is a cornerstone of sequential decision-making framework, dominated by two algorithmic families: UCB-based and adversarial methods such as follow the regularized leader (FTRL) and online mirror…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-30 Zichun Ye , Runqi Wang , Xutong Liu , Shuai Li

We introduce causal Markov Decision Processes (C-MDPs), a new formalism for sequential decision making which combines the standard MDP formulation with causal structures over state transition and reward functions. Many contemporary and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-16 Yangyi Lu , Amirhossein Meisami , Ambuj Tewari

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

We consider the problem of model selection for the general stochastic contextual bandits under the realizability assumption. We propose a successive refinement based algorithm called Adaptive Contextual Bandit ({\ttfamily ACB}), that works…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-07-21 Avishek Ghosh , Abishek Sankararaman , Kannan Ramchandran

In this paper, we study the combinatorial semi-bandits (CMAB) and focus on reducing the dependency of the batch-size $K$ in the regret bound, where $K$ is the total number of arms that can be pulled or triggered in each round. First, for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Xutong Liu , Jinhang Zuo , Siwei Wang , Carlee Joe-Wong , John C. S. Lui , Wei Chen

In stochastic contextual bandits, an agent sequentially makes actions from a time-dependent action set based on past experience to minimize the cumulative regret. Like many other machine learning algorithms, the performance of bandits…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-09 Yue Kang , Cho-Jui Hsieh , Thomas C. M. Lee

The Lipschitz bandit is a key variant of stochastic bandit problems where the expected reward function satisfies a Lipschitz condition with respect to an arm metric space. With its wide-ranging practical applications, various Lipschitz…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Bongsoo Yi , Yue Kang , Yao Li

Most contextual bandit algorithms minimize regret against the best fixed policy, a questionable benchmark for non-stationary environments that are ubiquitous in applications. In this work, we develop several efficient contextual bandit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-05 Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Alekh Agarwal , John Langford

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

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

Contextual multi-armed bandits are a popular choice to model sequential decision-making. E.g., in a healthcare application we may perform various tests to asses a patient condition (exploration) and then decide on the best treatment to give…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-08 Mirco Mutti , Jeongyeol Kwon , Shie Mannor , Aviv Tamar

We study the piecewise stationary combinatorial semi-bandit problem with causally related rewards. In our nonstationary environment, variations in the base arms' distributions, causal relationships between rewards, or both, change the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-27 Behzad Nourani-Koliji , Steven Bilaj , Amir Rezaei Balef , Setareh Maghsudi

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-28 Marco Fiandri , Alberto Maria Metelli , Francesco Trov`o

We study an important variant of the stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, which takes penalization into consideration. Instead of directly maximizing cumulative expected reward, we need to balance between the total reward and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-11-16 Guanhua Fang , Ping Li , Gennady Samorodnitsky

Information-directed sampling (IDS) is a powerful framework for solving bandit problems which has shown strong results in both Bayesian and frequentist settings. However, frequentist IDS, like many other bandit algorithms, requires that one…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-10 Piotr M. Suder , Eric Laber

In causal bandit problems, the action set consists of interventions on variables of a causal graph. Several researchers have recently studied such bandit problems and pointed out their practical applications. However, all existing works…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-11-11 Yangyi Lu , Amirhossein Meisami , Ambuj Tewari