Related papers: Adaptivity Gaps for Stochastic Probing with Subadd…
We study reward maximisation in a wide class of structured stochastic multi-armed bandit problems, where the mean rewards of arms satisfy some given structural constraints, e.g. linear, unimodal, sparse, etc. Our aim is to develop methods…
Change point estimation is often formulated as a search for the maximum of a gain function describing improved fits when segmenting the data. Searching through all candidates requires $O(n)$ evaluations of the gain function for an interval…
Adaptivity is an important feature of data analysis---the choice of questions to ask about a dataset often depends on previous interactions with the same dataset. However, statistical validity is typically studied in a nonadaptive model,…
In the property testing model, the task is to distinguish objects possessing some property from the objects that are far from it. One of such properties is monotonicity, when the objects are functions from one poset to another. This is an…
We study stochastic linear bandits where, in each round, the learner receives a set of actions (i.e., feature vectors), from which it chooses an element and obtains a stochastic reward. The expected reward is a fixed but unknown linear…
Sequential testing problems involve a complex system with several components, each of which is "working" with some independent probability. The outcome of each component can be determined by performing a test, which incurs some cost. The…
The primary goal of this paper is to provide an efficient solution algorithm based on the augmented Lagrangian framework for optimization problems with a stochastic objective function and deterministic constraints. Our main contribution is…
We study the general norm optimization for combinatorial problems, initiated by Chakrabarty and Swamy (STOC 2019). We propose a general formulation that captures a large class of combinatorial structures: we are given a set $U$ of $n$…
Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation is the problem of determining the value of a given Boolean function f on an unknown input x, when each bit of x_i of x can only be determined by paying an associated cost c_i. The assumption is that x…
In stochastic combinatorial optimization, algorithms differ in their adaptivity: whether or not they query realized randomness and adapt to it. Dean et al. (FOCS '04) formalize the adaptivity gap, which compares the performance of fully…
We consider the Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation (SBFE) problem in the well-studied case of $k$-of-$n$ functions: There are independent Boolean random variables $x_1,\dots,x_n$ where each variable $i$ has a known probability $p_i$ of…
We resolve the open question regarding the sample complexity of policy learning for maximizing the long-run average reward associated with a uniformly ergodic Markov decision process (MDP), assuming a generative model. In this context, the…
We study the stochastic linear bandits with parameter noise model, in which the reward of action $a$ is $a^\top \theta$ where $\theta$ is sampled i.i.d. We show a regret upper bound of $\widetilde{O} (\sqrt{d T \log (K/\delta)…
We investigate the uniform convergence of subdifferential mappings from empirical risk to population risk in nonsmooth, nonconvex stochastic optimization. This question is key to understanding how empirical stationary points approximate…
Stochastic approximation is a powerful class of algorithms with celebrated success. However, a large body of previous analysis focuses on stochastic approximations driven by contractive operators, which is not applicable in some important…
The Huge Object model is a distribution testing model in which we are given access to independent samples from an unknown distribution over the set of strings $\{0,1\}^n$, but are only allowed to query a few bits from the samples. We…
This paper considers online optimization for a system that performs a sequence of back-to-back tasks. Each task can be processed in one of multiple processing modes that affect the duration of the task, the reward earned, and an additional…
In the submodular cover problem, we are given a non-negative monotone submodular function $f$ over a ground set $E$ of items, and the goal is to choose a smallest subset $S \subseteq E$ such that $f(S) = Q$ where $Q = f(E)$. In the…
Adapting to a priori unknown noise level is a very important but challenging problem in sequential decision-making as efficient exploration typically requires knowledge of the noise level, which is often loosely specified. We report…
For positive integers $n, d$, consider the hypergrid $[n]^d$ with the coordinate-wise product partial ordering denoted by $\prec$. A function $f: [n]^d \mapsto \mathbb{N}$ is monotone if $\forall x \prec y$, $f(x) \leq f(y)$. A function $f$…