English
Related papers

Related papers: Contextual Bandit Optimization with Pre-Trained Ne…

200 papers

In this work we investigate meta-learning (or learning-to-learn) approaches in multi-task linear stochastic bandit problems that can originate from multiple environments. Inspired by the work of [1] on meta-learning in a sequence of linear…

Typical contextual bandit algorithms assume that the rewards at each round lie in some fixed range $[0, R]$, and their regret scales polynomially with this reward range $R$. However, many practical scenarios naturally involve heavy-tailed…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-05 Chenlu Ye , Yujia Jin , Alekh Agarwal , Tong Zhang

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

We revisit the classic regret-minimization problem in the stochastic multi-armed bandit setting when the arm-distributions are allowed to be heavy-tailed. Regret minimization has been well studied in simpler settings of either bounded…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-09 Shubhada Agrawal , Sandeep Juneja , Wouter M. Koolen

We consider the adversarial linear contextual bandit setting, which allows for the loss functions associated with each of $K$ arms to change over time without restriction. Assuming the $d$-dimensional contexts are drawn from a fixed known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-25 Julia Olkhovskaya , Jack Mayo , Tim van Erven , Gergely Neu , Chen-Yu Wei

Dueling bandits are widely used to model preferential feedback prevalent in many applications such as recommendation systems and ranking. In this paper, we study the Borda regret minimization problem for dueling bandits, which aims to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-27 Yue Wu , Tao Jin , Hao Lou , Farzad Farnoud , Quanquan Gu

We introduce the first best-of-both-worlds algorithm for contextual combinatorial semi-bandits that simultaneously guarantees $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\sqrt{T})$ regret in the adversarial regime and $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\ln T)$ regret…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-27 Mengmeng Li , Philipp J. Schneider , Jelisaveta Aleksić , Daniel Kuhn

A major research direction in contextual bandits is to develop algorithms that are computationally efficient, yet support flexible, general-purpose function approximation. Algorithms based on modeling rewards have shown strong empirical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-14 Dylan J. Foster , Claudio Gentile , Mehryar Mohri , Julian Zimmert

Multi-armed Bandit motivates methods with provable upper bounds on regret and also the counterpart lower bounds have been extensively studied in this context. Recently, Multi-agent Multi-armed Bandit has gained significant traction in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-17 Mengfan Xu , Diego Klabjan

Contextual bandits are a form of multi-armed bandit in which the agent has access to predictive side information (known as the context) for each arm at each time step, and have been used to model personalized news recommendation, ad…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-05-25 Aniket Anand Deshmukh , Urun Dogan , Clayton Scott

We consider the classic online learning and stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems, when at each step, the online policy can probe and find out which of a small number ($k$) of choices has better reward (or loss) before making its…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-11-08 Aditya Bhaskara , Sreenivas Gollapudi , Sungjin Im , Kostas Kollias , Kamesh Munagala

We study regret minimization in causal bandits under causal sufficiency where the underlying causal structure is not known to the agent. Previous work has focused on identifying the reward's parents and then applying classic bandit methods…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Mohammad Shahverdikondori , Jalal Etesami , Negar Kiyavash

We consider an adversarial variant of the classic $K$-armed linear contextual bandit problem where the sequence of loss functions associated with each arm are allowed to change without restriction over time. Under the assumption that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-25 Gergely Neu , Julia Olkhovskaya

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-04 Jun Geng , Lifeng Lai

Computationally efficient contextual bandits are often based on estimating a predictive model of rewards given contexts and arms using past data. However, when the reward model is not well-specified, the bandit algorithm may incur…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-14 Sanath Kumar Krishnamurthy , Vitor Hadad , Susan Athey

We consider a linear stochastic bandit problem where the dimension $K$ of the unknown parameter $\theta$ is larger than the sampling budget $n$. In such cases, it is in general impossible to derive sub-linear regret bounds since usual…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-05-23 Alexandra Carpentier , Rémi Munos

Multi-armed bandit problems are the predominant theoretical model of exploration-exploitation tradeoffs in learning, and they have countless applications ranging from medical trials, to communication networks, to Web search and advertising.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-09-06 Ashwinkumar Badanidiyuru , Robert Kleinberg , Aleksandrs Slivkins

The contextual duelling bandit problem models adaptive recommender systems, where the algorithm presents a set of items to the user, and the user's choice reveals their preference. This setup is well suited for implicit choices users make…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-27 Suryanarayana Sankagiri , Jalal Etesami , Pouria Fatemi , Matthias Grossglauser

Contextual bandit algorithms are at the core of many applications, including recommender systems, clinical trials, and optimal portfolio selection. One of the most popular problems studied in the contextual bandit literature is to maximize…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-24 Siddhant Chaudhary , Abhishek Sinha

We study how to learn optimal interventions sequentially given causal information represented as a causal graph along with associated conditional distributions. Causal modeling is useful in real world problems like online advertisement…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-06-12 Yangyi Lu , Amirhossein Meisami , Ambuj Tewari , Zhenyu Yan