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Related papers: Linear Bandits with Non-i.i.d. Noise

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In this work, we develop linear bandit algorithms that automatically adapt to different environments. By plugging a novel loss estimator into the optimization problem that characterizes the instance-optimal strategy, our first algorithm not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Mengxiao Zhang , Xiaojin Zhang

In the classical multi-armed bandit problem, instance-dependent algorithms attain improved performance on "easy" problems with a gap between the best and second-best arm. Are similar guarantees possible for contextual bandits? While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-08 Dylan J. Foster , Alexander Rakhlin , David Simchi-Levi , Yunzong Xu

In this paper we adapt the nearest neighbour rule to the contextual bandit problem. Our algorithm handles the fully adversarial setting in which no assumptions at all are made about the data-generation process. When combined with a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-11 Stephen Pasteris , Chris Hicks , Vasilios Mavroudis

We study the benefits of sparsity in nonparametric contextual bandit problems, in which the set of candidate features is countably or uncountably infinite. Our contribution is two-fold. First, using a novel reduction to sequences of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-16 Hamish Flynn , Julia Olkhovskaya , Paul Rognon-Vael

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-19 Yongyi Guo , Ziping Xu , Susan Murphy

We study contextual bandits in the presence of a stage-wise constraint when the constraint must be satisfied both with high probability and in expectation. We start with the linear case where both the reward function and the stage-wise…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-22 Aldo Pacchiano , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Peter Bartlett

We explore a stochastic contextual linear bandit problem where the agent observes a noisy, corrupted version of the true context through a noise channel with an unknown noise parameter. Our objective is to design an action policy that can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-26 Sharu Theresa Jose , Shana Moothedath

The Lipschitz bandit problem extends stochastic bandits to a continuous action set defined over a metric space, where the expected reward function satisfies a Lipschitz condition. In this work, we introduce a new problem of Lipschitz bandit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Zhongxuan Liu , Yue Kang , Thomas C. M. Lee

We develop a general theory to optimize the frequentist regret for sequential learning problems, where efficient bandit and reinforcement learning algorithms can be derived from unified Bayesian principles. We propose a novel optimization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-12 Yunbei Xu , Assaf Zeevi

Recent work shows that when contexts are drawn i.i.d., linear contextual bandits can be reduced to single-context linear bandits. This ``contexts are cheap" perspective is highly advantageous, as it allows for sharper finite-time analyses…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Kaan Buyukkalayci , Osama Hanna , Christina Fragouli

In this paper, we study the problem of stochastic linear bandits with finite action sets. Most of existing work assume the payoffs are bounded or sub-Gaussian, which may be violated in some scenarios such as financial markets. To settle…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-29 Bo Xue , Guanghui Wang , Yimu Wang , Lijun Zhang

We study a novel multi-armed bandit problem that models the challenge faced by a company wishing to explore new strategies to maximize revenue whilst simultaneously maintaining their revenue above a fixed baseline, uniformly over time.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-02-16 Yifan Wu , Roshan Shariff , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvári

The design and performance analysis of bandit algorithms in the presence of stage-wise safety or reliability constraints has recently garnered significant interest. In this work, we consider the linear stochastic bandit problem under…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-03 Ahmadreza Moradipari , Sanae Amani , Mahnoosh Alizadeh , Christos Thrampoulidis

We propose a simple model selection approach for algorithms in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. As opposed to prior work that (implicitly) assumes knowledge of the optimal regret, we only require that each base…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Aldo Pacchiano , Christoph Dann , Claudio Gentile , Peter Bartlett

Statistical inference with bandit data presents fundamental challenges due to adaptive sampling, which violates the independence assumptions underlying classical asymptotic theory. Recent work has identified stability as a sufficient…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-12 Budhaditya Halder , Ishan Sengupta , Koustav Chowdhury , Koulik Khamaru

We consider the adversarial linear contextual bandit problem, where the loss vectors are selected fully adversarially and the per-round action set (i.e. the context) is drawn from a fixed distribution. Existing methods for this problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Haolin Liu , Chen-Yu Wei , Julian Zimmert

The statistical framework of Generalized Linear Models (GLM) can be applied to sequential problems involving categorical or ordinal rewards associated, for instance, with clicks, likes or ratings. In the example of binary rewards, logistic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-24 Yoan Russac , Olivier Cappé , Aurélien Garivier

We study the problem of worst case regret in piecewise stationary multi armed bandits. While the minimax theory for stationary bandits is well established, understanding analogous limits in time-varying settings is challenging. Existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Gal Mendelson , Eyal Tadmor

We consider the classical stochastic multi-armed bandit but where, from time to time and roughly with frequency $\epsilon$, an extra observation is gathered by the agent for free. We prove that, no matter how small $\epsilon$ is the agent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-11 Rémy Degenne , Evrard Garcelon , Vianney Perchet

In the contextual linear bandit setting, algorithms built on the optimism principle fail to exploit the structure of the problem and have been shown to be asymptotically suboptimal. In this paper, we follow recent approaches of deriving…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-23 Andrea Tirinzoni , Matteo Pirotta , Marcello Restelli , Alessandro Lazaric