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The "scenario approach" provides an intuitive method to address chance constrained problems arising in control design for uncertain systems. It addresses these problems by replacing the chance constraint with a finite number of sampled…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-08-05 Xiaojing Zhang , Sergio Grammatico , Georg Schildbach , Paul Goulart , John Lygeros

Improving sample-efficiency and safety are crucial challenges when deploying reinforcement learning in high-stakes real world applications. We propose LAMBDA, a novel model-based approach for policy optimization in safety critical tasks…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-08 Yarden As , Ilnura Usmanova , Sebastian Curi , Andreas Krause

Scenario decision making offers a flexible way of making decision in an uncertain environment while obtaining probabilistic guarantees on the risk of failure of the decision. The idea of this approach is to draw samples of the uncertainty…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-03 Guillaume O. Berger

The influence maximization paradigm has been used by researchers in various fields in order to study how information spreads in social networks. While previously the attention was mostly on efficiency, more recently fairness issues have…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2021-11-10 Ruben Becker , Gianlorenzo D'Angelo , Sajjad Ghobadi , Hugo Gilbert

In this paper, we aim at solving a class of multiple testing problems under the Bayesian sequential decision framework. Our motivating application comes from binary labeling tasks in crowdsourcing, where the requestor needs to…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-08-29 Xiaoou Li , Yunxiao Chen , Xi Chen , Jingchen Liu , Zhiliang Ying

In a classical optimal stopping problem the aim is to maximize the expected value of a functional of a diffusion evaluated at a stopping time. This note considers optimal stopping problems beyond this paradigm. We study problems in which…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-08-04 Vicky Henderson , David Hobson , Matthew Zeng

In the field of reinforcement learning there has been recent progress towards safety and high-confidence bounds on policy performance. However, to our knowledge, no practical methods exist for determining high-confidence policy performance…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-06-26 Daniel S. Brown , Scott Niekum

Practitioners often use data from a randomized controlled trial to learn a treatment assignment policy that can be deployed on a target population. A recurring concern in doing so is that, even if the randomized trial was well-executed…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-04-25 Lihua Lei , Roshni Sahoo , Stefan Wager

Identifying leading measurement units from a large collection is a common inference task in various domains of large-scale inference. Testing approaches, which measure evidence against a null hypothesis rather than effect magnitude, tend to…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-11-17 Nicholas C. Henderson , Michael A. Newton

Opportunistic detection rules (ODRs) are variants of fixed-sample-size detection rules in which the statistician is allowed to make an early decision on the alternative hypothesis opportunistically based on the sequentially observed…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2016-02-15 Wenyi Zhang , George V. Moustakides , H. Vincent Poor

Randomization tests deliver exact finite-sample Type 1 error control when the null satisfies the randomization hypothesis. In practice, achieving these guarantees often requires stronger conditions than the null hypothesis of primary…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-04-03 Deniz Dutz , Xinyi Zhang

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular, sample-efficient technique for expensive, black-box optimization. One such problem arising in manufacturing is that of maximizing the reliability, or equivalently minimizing the probability of a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Jack M. Buckingham , Ivo Couckuyt , Juergen Branke

We consider an original problem that arises from the issue of security analysis of a power system and that we name optimal discovery with probabilistic expert advice. We address it with an algorithm based on the optimistic paradigm and on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-04-02 Sebastien Bubeck , Damien Ernst , Aurelien Garivier

The optimal selection of experimental conditions is essential to maximizing the value of data for inference and prediction, particularly in situations where experiments are time-consuming and expensive to conduct. We propose a general…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-12-04 Xun Huan , Youssef M. Marzouk

Sample size derivation is a crucial element of the planning phase of any confirmatory trial. A sample size is typically derived based on constraints on the maximal acceptable type I error rate and a minimal desired power. Here, power…

Domain experts often possess valuable physical insights that are overlooked in fully automated decision-making processes such as Bayesian optimisation. In this article we apply high-throughput (batch) Bayesian optimisation alongside…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-06 Tom Savage , Ehecatl Antonio del Rio Chanona

Design of experiments has traditionally relied on the frequentist hypothesis testing framework where the optimal size of the experiment is specified as the minimum sample size that guarantees a required level of power. Sample size…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-08-07 Shirin Golchi , Luke Hagar

A key trait of stochastic optimizers is that multiple runs of the same optimizer in attempting to solve the same problem can produce different results. As a result, their performance is evaluated over several repeats, or runs, on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Moslem Noori , Elisabetta Valiante , Thomas Van Vaerenbergh , Masoud Mohseni , Ignacio Rozada

We consider a moving target that we seek to learn from samples. Our results extend randomized techniques developed in control and optimization for a constant target to the case where the target is changing. We derive a novel bound on the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-11 Nikolaus Vertovec , Kostas Margellos , Maria Prandini

Prior probabilities of clinical hypotheses are not systematically used for clinical trial design yet, due to a concern that poor priors may lead to poor decisions. To address this concern, a conservative approach to Bayesian trial design is…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-21 Fabio Rigat