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Contextual bandit algorithms are sensitive to the estimation method of the outcome model as well as the exploration method used, particularly in the presence of rich heterogeneity or complex outcome models, which can lead to difficult…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-18 Maria Dimakopoulou , Zhengyuan Zhou , Susan Athey , Guido Imbens

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem is a foundational framework in sequential decision-making under uncertainty, extensively studied for its applications in areas such as clinical trials, online advertising, and resource allocation.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-28 Ali Baheri

We study contextual bandits with nonlinear and path-dependent rewards through a novel signature-transform-based approach. Leveraging the universal nonlinearity property of signatures, we approximate continuous path-dependent reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Xin Guo , Grace He , Xinyu 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 introduce a Multi-User Contextual Cascading Bandit model, a new combinatorial bandit framework that captures realistic online advertising scenarios where multiple users interact with sequentially displayed items simultaneously. Unlike…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Jiho Park , Huiwen Jia

Contextual bandits with linear payoffs, which are also known as linear bandits, provide a powerful alternative for solving practical problems of sequential decisions, e.g., online advertisements. In the era of big data, contextual data…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-21 Xiaotian Yu

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

The contextual combinatorial semi-bandit problem with linear payoff functions is a decision-making problem in which a learner chooses a set of arms with the feature vectors in each round under given constraints so as to maximize the sum of…

We study a constrained contextual linear bandit setting, where the goal of the agent is to produce a sequence of policies, whose expected cumulative reward over the course of $T$ rounds is maximum, and each has an expected cost below a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-20 Aldo Pacchiano , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Peter Bartlett , Heinrich Jiang

Autoregressive processes naturally arise in a large variety of real-world scenarios, including stock markets, sales forecasting, weather prediction, advertising, and pricing. When facing a sequential decision-making problem in such a…

The contextual bandit has been identified as a powerful framework to formulate the recommendation process as a sequential decision-making process, where each item is regarded as an arm and the objective is to minimize the regret of $T$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-30 Yikun Ban , Yunzhe Qi , Tianxin Wei , Lihui Liu , Jingrui He

We study stage-wise conservative linear stochastic bandits: an instance of bandit optimization, which accounts for (unknown) safety constraints that appear in applications such as online advertising and medical trials. At each stage, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-02 Ahmadreza Moradipari , Christos Thrampoulidis , Mahnoosh Alizadeh

Sequential design of experiments for optimizing a reward function in causal systems can be effectively modeled by the sequential design of interventions in causal bandits (CBs). In the existing literature on CBs, a critical assumption is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-06 Zirui Yan , Arpan Mukherjee , Burak Varıcı , Ali Tajer

In many applications, e.g. in healthcare and e-commerce, the goal of a contextual bandit may be to learn an optimal treatment assignment policy at the end of the experiment. That is, to minimize simple regret. However, this objective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-06 Sanath Kumar Krishnamurthy , Ruohan Zhan , Susan Athey , Emma Brunskill

We study contextual bandits with budget and time constraints, referred to as constrained contextual bandits.The time and budget constraints significantly complicate the exploration and exploitation tradeoff because they introduce complex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-10-20 Huasen Wu , R. Srikant , Xin Liu , Chong Jiang

Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithms are a widely-used class of sequential algorithms for the $K$-armed bandit problem. Despite extensive research over the past decades aimed at understanding their asymptotic and (near) minimax…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-12-10 Qiyang Han , Koulik Khamaru , Cun-Hui Zhang

Many sequential decision-making problems in communication networks can be modeled as contextual bandit problems, which are natural extensions of the well-known multi-armed bandit problem. In contextual bandit problems, at each time, an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-05-10 Pranav Sakulkar , Bhaskar Krishnamachari

We consider contextual linear bandits over networks, a class of sequential decision-making problems where learning occurs simultaneously across multiple locations and the reward distributions share structural similarities while also…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Chuyun Deng , Huiwen Jia

Nonparametric contextual bandit is an important model of sequential decision making problems. Under $\alpha$-Tsybakov margin condition, existing research has established a regret bound of $\tilde{O}\left(T^{1-\frac{\alpha+1}{d+2}}\right)$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-09 Puning Zhao , Rongfei Fan , Shaowei Wang , Li Shen , Qixin Zhang , Zong Ke , Tianhang Zheng

We consider cross-silo federated linear contextual bandit (LCB) problem under differential privacy, where multiple silos (agents) interact with the local users and communicate via a central server to realize collaboration while without…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-01 Xingyu Zhou , Sayak Ray Chowdhury