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We consider a novel formulation of the multi-armed bandit model, which we call the contextual bandit with restricted context, where only a limited number of features can be accessed by the learner at every iteration. This novel formulation…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-06-09 Djallel Bouneffouf , Irina Rish , Guillermo A. Cecchi , Raphael Feraud

We study the efficiency of Thompson sampling for contextual bandits. Existing Thompson sampling-based algorithms need to construct a Laplace approximation (i.e., a Gaussian distribution) of the posterior distribution, which is inefficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Pan Xu , Hongkai Zheng , Eric Mazumdar , Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Anima Anandkumar

Bayesian strategies for contextual bandits have proved promising in single-state reinforcement learning tasks by modeling uncertainty using context information from the environment. In this paper, we propose Greedy Bandits with Sampled…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-03 Dom Huh

Multi-dimensional online decision making plays a crucial role in many real applications such as online recommendation and digital marketing. In these problems, a decision at each time is a combination of choices from different types of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-14 Jie Zhou , Botao Hao , Zheng Wen , Jingfei Zhang , Will Wei Sun

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

The dueling bandits problem is an online learning framework for learning from pairwise preference feedback, and is particularly well-suited for modeling settings that elicit subjective or implicit human feedback. In this paper, we study the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-02 Yanan Sui , Vincent Zhuang , Joel W. Burdick , Yisong Yue

Contextual bandits are widely used in industrial personalization systems. These online learning frameworks learn a treatment assignment policy in the presence of treatment effects that vary with the observed contextual features of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-11 Claudia Roberts , Maria Dimakopoulou , Qifeng Qiao , Ashok Chandrashekhar , Tony Jebara

Selecting a sample generation scheme from multiple prompt-based generative models, including large language models (LLMs) and prompt-guided image and video generation models, is typically addressed by choosing the model that maximizes an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-05 Xiaoyan Hu , Ho-fung Leung , Farzan Farnia

Designing efficient general-purpose contextual bandit algorithms that work with large -- or even continuous -- action spaces would facilitate application to important scenarios such as information retrieval, recommendation systems, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Yinglun Zhu , Paul Mineiro

We study dueling bandits with weak utility-based regret when preferences over arms have a total order and carry observable feature vectors. The order is assumed to be determined by these feature vectors, an unknown preference vector, and a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-06-16 Bangrui Chen , Peter I. Frazier

In this work, we study the performance of the Thompson Sampling algorithm for Contextual Bandit problems based on the framework introduced by Neu et al. and their concept of lifted information ratio. First, we prove a comprehensive bound on…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-04-27 Amaury Gouverneur , Borja Rodríguez-Gálvez , Tobias J. Oechtering , Mikael Skoglund

We propose a new framework for contextual multi-armed bandits based on tree ensembles. Our framework adapts two widely used bandit methods, Upper Confidence Bound and Thompson Sampling, for both standard and combinatorial settings. As part…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Hannes Nilsson , Rikard Johansson , Niklas Åkerblom , Morteza Haghir Chehreghani

A standard assumption in contextual multi-arm bandit is that the true context is perfectly known before arm selection. Nonetheless, in many practical applications (e.g., cloud resource management), prior to arm selection, the context…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-06 Jianyi Yang , Shaolei Ren

We investigate stochastic combinatorial multi-armed bandit with semi-bandit feedback (CMAB). In CMAB, the question of the existence of an efficient policy with an optimal asymptotic regret (up to a factor poly-logarithmic with the action…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-01-05 Pierre Perrault , Etienne Boursier , Vianney Perchet , Michal Valko

Thompson Sampling has recently been shown to be optimal in the Bernoulli Multi-Armed Bandit setting[Kaufmann et al., 2012]. This bandit problem assumes stationary distributions for the rewards. It is often unrealistic to model the real…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-02-18 Joseph Mellor , Jonathan Shapiro

Non-stationarity is ubiquitous in human behavior and addressing it in the contextual bandits is challenging. Several works have addressed the problem by investigating semi-parametric contextual bandits and warned that ignoring…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-18 Young-Geun Choi , Gi-Soo Kim , Seunghoon Paik , Myunghee Cho Paik

We consider the problem of learning to choose actions using contextual information when provided with limited feedback in the form of relative pairwise comparisons. We study this problem in the dueling-bandits framework of Yue et al.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-06-16 Miroslav Dudík , Katja Hofmann , Robert E. Schapire , Aleksandrs Slivkins , Masrour Zoghi

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 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

We propose algorithms based on a multi-level Thompson sampling scheme, for the stochastic multi-armed bandit and its contextual variant with linear expected rewards, in the setting where arms are clustered. We show, both theoretically and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-16 Emil Carlsson , Devdatt Dubhashi , Fredrik D. Johansson