Related papers: Thompson Sampling in Function Spaces via Neural Op…
Given a set of arms $\mathcal{Z}\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ and an unknown parameter vector $\theta_\ast\in\mathbb{R}^d$, the pure exploration linear bandit problem aims to return $\arg\max_{z\in \mathcal{Z}} z^{\top}\theta_{\ast}$, with high…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a powerful approach to sample-efficient optimization of black-box functions. However, in settings with very few function evaluations, a successful application of BO may require transferring information from…
In this work, we consider methods for solving large-scale optimization problems with a possibly nonsmooth objective function. The key idea is to first specify a class of optimization algorithms using a generic iterative scheme involving…
We consider a finite-horizon multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in a Bayesian setting, for which we propose an information relaxation sampling framework. With this framework, we define an intuitive family of control policies that include…
Bayesian optimization has recently emerged as a popular method for the sample-efficient optimization of expensive black-box functions. However, the application to high-dimensional problems with several thousand observations remains…
Thompson sampling is a heuristic algorithm for the multi-armed bandit problem which has a long tradition in machine learning. The algorithm has a Bayesian spirit in the sense that it selects arms based on posterior samples of reward…
Models of physics beyond the Standard Model often contain a large number of parameters. These form a high-dimensional space that is computationally intractable to fully explore. Experimental constraints project onto a subspace of viable…
Many real-world functions are defined over both categorical and category-specific continuous variables and thus cannot be optimized by traditional Bayesian optimization (BO) methods. To optimize such functions, we propose a new method that…
In this paper we consider the following question: can we optimize objective functions from the training data we use to learn them? We formalize this question through a novel framework we call optimization from samples (OPS). In OPS, we are…
Contextual bandits constitute a classical framework for decision-making under uncertainty. In this setting, the goal is to learn the arms of highest reward subject to contextual information, while the unknown reward parameters of each arm…
The purpose of this paper is twofold. On one side, we present a general framework for Bayesian optimization and we compare it with some related fields in active learning and Bayesian numerical analysis. On the other hand, Bayesian…
Bayesian Optimization is a popular approach for optimizing expensive black-box functions. Its key idea is to use a surrogate model to approximate the objective and, importantly, quantify the associated uncertainty that allows a sequential…
We consider the stochastic linear contextual bandit problem with high-dimensional features. We analyze the Thompson sampling algorithm using special classes of sparsity-inducing priors (e.g., spike-and-slab) to model the unknown parameter…
Thompson sampling (TS) is one of the most popular exploration techniques in reinforcement learning (RL). However, most TS algorithms with theoretical guarantees are difficult to implement and not generalizable to Deep RL. While the emerging…
Computationally efficient surrogates for parametrized physical models play a crucial role in science and engineering. Operator learning provides data-driven surrogates that map between function spaces. However, instead of full-field…
We introduce an optimal strategy to sample quantum outcomes of local measurement strings for isometric tensor network states. Our method generates samples based on an exact cumulative bounding function, without prior knowledge, in the…
This paper presents a new approach for batch Bayesian Optimization (BO) called Thompson Sampling-Regret to Sigma Ratio directed sampling (TS-RSR), where we sample a new batch of actions by minimizing a Thompson Sampling approximation of a…
Thompson Sampling is one of the oldest heuristics for multi-armed bandit problems. It is a randomized algorithm based on Bayesian ideas, and has recently generated significant interest after several studies demonstrated it to have better…
This paper considers non-smooth optimization problems where we seek to minimize the pointwise maximum of a continuously parameterized family of functions. Since the objective function is given as the solution to a maximization problem,…
In this paper, we study optimization methods consisting of iteratively minimizing surrogates of an objective function. By proposing several algorithmic variants and simple convergence analyses, we make two main contributions. First, we…