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Regret is the cost of uncertainty in algorithmic decision-making. Quantifying regret typically requires computationally expensive simulation via Sample Average Approximation (SAA), with complexity $\mathcal{O}(Bn^{2}d^{3})$ in the number of…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-05-15 Irene Aldridge

We study the framework of universal dynamic regret minimization with strongly convex losses. We answer an open problem in Baby and Wang 2021 by showing that in a proper learning setup, Strongly Adaptive algorithms can achieve the near…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-25 Dheeraj Baby , Yu-Xiang Wang

We consider the classic problem of online convex optimisation. Whereas the notion of static regret is relevant for stationary problems, the notion of switching regret is more appropriate for non-stationary problems. A switching regret is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-07 Stephen Pasteris , Chris Hicks , Vasilios Mavroudis , Mark Herbster

This paper concerns a high-dimensional stochastic programming problem of minimizing a function of expected cost with a matrix argument. To this problem, one of the most widely applied solution paradigms is the sample average approximation…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-07-22 Hongcheng Liu , Charles Hernandez , Hung Yi Lee

We study episodic reinforcement learning with fixed reward and transition functions, but with episode-dependent admissible action sets that are observed at the start of each episode. Performance is measured by cumulative regret against the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Zijun Chen , Zihan Zhang

We derive an online learning algorithm with improved regret guarantees for `easy' loss sequences. We consider two types of `easiness': (a) stochastic loss sequences and (b) adversarial loss sequences with small effective range of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-28 Tobias Sommer Thune , Yevgeny Seldin

In this work, we study the online convex optimization problem with curved losses and delayed feedback. When losses are strongly convex, existing approaches obtain regret bounds of order $d_{\max} \ln T$, where $d_{\max}$ is the maximum…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Hao Qiu , Emmanuel Esposito , Mengxiao Zhang

We consider a stochastic inventory control problem under censored demands, lost sales, and positive lead times. This is a fundamental problem in inventory management, with significant literature establishing near-optimality of a simple…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-14 Shipra Agrawal , Randy Jia

Achieving sample efficiency in online episodic reinforcement learning (RL) requires optimally balancing exploration and exploitation. When it comes to a finite-horizon episodic Markov decision process with $S$ states, $A$ actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Gen Li , Laixi Shi , Yuxin Chen , Yuejie Chi

This study considers online learning with general directed feedback graphs. For this problem, we present best-of-both-worlds algorithms that achieve nearly tight regret bounds for adversarial environments as well as poly-logarithmic regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-29 Shinji Ito , Taira Tsuchiya , Junya Honda

We consider the problem of minimizing different notions of swap regret in online optimization. These forms of regret are tightly connected to correlated equilibrium concepts in games, and have been more recently shown to guarantee…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Ioannis Anagnostides , Gabriele Farina , Maxwell Fishelson , Haipeng Luo , Jon Schneider

This paper addresses an online convex optimization problem where the cost function at each step depends on a history of past decisions (i.e., memory), and the decision maker has access to limited predictions of future cost values within a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-29 Zhengmiao Wang , Zhi-Wei Liu , Ming Chi , Xiaoling Wang , Housheng Su , Lintao Ye

In many sequential decision making applications, the change of decision would bring an additional cost, such as the wear-and-tear cost associated with changing server status. To control the switching cost, we introduce the problem of online…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-23 Guanghui Wang , Yuanyu Wan , Tianbao Yang , Lijun Zhang

We consider online forecasting problems for non-convex machine learning models. Forecasting introduces several challenges such as (i) frequent updates are necessary to deal with concept drift issues since the dynamics of the environment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-28 Sergul Aydore , Tianhao Zhu , Dean Foster

Sample average approximation (SAA) replaces an intractable expected objective by an empirical average and is a basic device of modern stochastic optimization. We develop a rate theory for optimal values and empirical…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-29 Hien Duy Nguyen , Jacob Westerhout , Xin Guo

In clinical trials and other applications, we often see regions of the feature space that appear to exhibit interesting behaviour, but it is unclear whether these observed phenomena are reflected at the population level. Focusing on a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-09-21 Henry W. J. Reeve , Timothy I. Cannings , Richard J. Samworth

This paper addresses Online Convex Optimization (OCO) problems where the constraints have additive perturbations that (i) vary over time and (ii) are not known at the time to make a decision. Perturbations may not be i.i.d. generated and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-06-04 Víctor Valls , George Iosifidis , Douglas J. Leith , Leandros Tassiulas

In this paper, the problem of distributed optimization is studied via a network of agents. Each agent only has access to a stochastic gradient of its own objective function in the previous time, and can communicate with its neighbors via a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-29 Yuchen Yang , Kaihong Lu , Long Wang

This paper studies bandit convex optimization with constraints, where the learner aims to generate a sequence of decisions under partial information of loss functions such that the cumulative loss is reduced as well as the cumulative…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-18 Yasunari Hikima

Deep reinforcement learning has achieved impressive successes yet often requires a very large amount of interaction data. This result is perhaps unsurprising, as using complicated function approximation often requires more data to fit, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-20 Jonathan N. Lee , Aldo Pacchiano , Vidya Muthukumar , Weihao Kong , Emma Brunskill