Related papers: Fast and Sample Efficient Multi-Task Representatio…
In the stochastic contextual bandit setting, regret-minimizing algorithms have been extensively researched, but their instance-minimizing best-arm identification counterparts remain seldom studied. In this work, we focus on the stochastic…
Reinforcement learning generalizes multi-armed bandit problems with additional difficulties of a longer planning horizon and unknown transition kernel. We explore a black-box reduction from discounted infinite-horizon tabular reinforcement…
We consider the problem of designing contextual bandit algorithms in the ``cross-learning'' setting of Balseiro et al., where the learner observes the loss for the action they play in all possible contexts, not just the context of the…
Taking advantage of contextual information can potentially boost the performance of recommender systems. In the era of big data, such side information often has several dimensions. Thus, developing decision-making algorithms to cope with…
The cross-learning contextual bandit problem with graphical feedback has recently attracted significant attention. In this setting, there is a contextual bandit with a feedback graph over the arms, and pulling an arm reveals the loss for…
We introduce efficient algorithms which achieve nearly optimal regrets for the problem of stochastic online shortest path routing with end-to-end feedback. The setting is a natural application of the combinatorial stochastic bandits…
We initiate the study of learning in contextual bandits with the help of loss predictors. The main question we address is whether one can improve over the minimax regret $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T})$ for learning over $T$ rounds, when the total…
Most bandit policies are designed to either minimize regret in any problem instance, making very few assumptions about the underlying environment, or in a Bayesian sense, assuming a prior distribution over environment parameters. The former…
In this paper, we consider a best action identification problem in the stochastic linear bandit setup with a fixed confident constraint. In the considered best action identification problem, instead of minimizing the accumulative regret as…
We study the problem of dynamic batch learning in high-dimensional sparse linear contextual bandits, where a decision maker, under a given maximum-number-of-batch constraint and only able to observe rewards at the end of each batch, can…
We introduce the "inverse bandit" problem of estimating the rewards of a multi-armed bandit instance from observing the learning process of a low-regret demonstrator. Existing approaches to the related problem of inverse reinforcement…
In linear contextual bandits, the objective is to select actions that maximize cumulative rewards, modeled as a linear function with unknown parameters. Although Thompson Sampling performs well empirically, it does not achieve optimal…
We consider the following variant of contextual linear bandits motivated by routing applications in navigational engines and recommendation systems. We wish to learn a hidden $d$-dimensional value $w^*$. Every round, we are presented with a…
Most learning to rank research has assumed that the utility of different documents is independent, which results in learned ranking functions that return redundant results. The few approaches that avoid this have rather unsatisfyingly…
Representation learning is a widely adopted framework for learning in data-scarce environments to obtain a feature extractor or representation from various different yet related tasks. Despite extensive research on representation learning,…
Recent advances in contextual bandit optimization and reinforcement learning have garnered interest in applying these methods to real-world sequential decision making problems. Real-world applications frequently have constraints with…
Reinforcement learning addresses the dilemma between exploration to find profitable actions and exploitation to act according to the best observations already made. Bandit problems are one such class of problems in stateless environments…
This study investigates the problem of $K$-armed linear contextual bandits, an instance of the multi-armed bandit problem, under an adversarial corruption. At each round, a decision-maker observes an independent and identically distributed…
We consider the contextual bandit problem where at each time, the agent only has access to a noisy version of the context and the error variance (or an estimator of this variance). This setting is motivated by a wide range of applications…
Contextual multi-armed bandit problems arise frequently in important industrial applications. Existing solutions model the context either linearly, which enables uncertainty driven (principled) exploration, or non-linearly, by using…