Related papers: Cost-aware Stopping for Bayesian Optimization
The theory of reinforcement learning has focused on two fundamental problems: achieving low regret, and identifying $\epsilon$-optimal policies. While a simple reduction allows one to apply a low-regret algorithm to obtain an…
Most existing black-box optimization methods assume that all variables in the system being optimized have equal cost and can change freely at each iteration. However, in many real world systems, inputs are passed through a sequence of…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is widely used for optimising black-box functions but requires us to specify the length scale hyperparameter, which defines the smoothness of the functions the optimizer will consider. Most current BO algorithms…
Many applications require a learner to make sequential decisions given uncertainty regarding both the system's payoff function and safety constraints. In safety-critical systems, it is paramount that the learner's actions do not violate the…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is increasingly employed in critical applications such as materials design and drug discovery. An increasingly popular strategy in BO is to forgo the sole reliance on high-fidelity data and instead use an ensemble…
Most bandit algorithms assume that the reward variances or their upper bounds are known, and that they are the same for all arms. This naturally leads to suboptimal performance and higher regret due to variance overestimation. On the other…
Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms combined with value function approximation have recently achieved impressive performance in a variety of application domains. However, the theoretical understanding of such algorithms is limited,…
Sequential maximization of expected improvement (EI) is one of the most widely used policies in Bayesian optimization because of its simplicity and ability to handle noisy observations. In particular, the improvement function often uses the…
We consider Bayesian optimization using Gaussian Process models, also referred to as kernel-based bandit optimization. We study the methodology of exploring the domain using random samples drawn from a distribution. We show that this random…
We consider the problem of finding an input to a stochastic black box function such that the scalar output of the black box function is as close as possible to a target value in the sense of the expected squared error. While the…
We consider the problem of sequentially maximizing an unknown function $f$ over a set of actions of the form $(s,\mathbf{x})$, where the selected actions must satisfy a safety constraint with respect to an unknown safety function $g$. We…
We consider black-box global optimization of time-consuming-to-evaluate functions on behalf of a decision-maker (DM) whose preferences must be learned. Each feasible design is associated with a time-consuming-to-evaluate vector of…
We design mechanisms for online procurement of data held by strategic agents for machine learning tasks. The challenge is to use past data to actively price future data and give learning guarantees even when an agent's cost for revealing…
The naive application of Reinforcement Learning algorithms to continuous control problems -- such as locomotion and manipulation -- often results in policies which rely on high-amplitude, high-frequency control signals, known colloquially…
In the online non-stochastic control problem, an agent sequentially selects control inputs for a linear dynamical system when facing unknown and adversarially selected convex costs and disturbances. A common metric for evaluating control…
In multi-fidelity optimization, biased approximations of varying costs of the target function are available. This paper studies the problem of optimizing a locally smooth function with a limited budget, where the learner has to make a…
We consider a discrete-time bipartite matching model with random arrivals of units of supply and demand that can wait in queues located at the nodes in the network. A control policy determines which are matched at each time. The focus is on…
We consider reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the infinite-horizon, average-reward setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, a continuous-time process moves to a state and stays there for a…
Price-based revenue management is an important problem in operations management with many practical applications. The problem considers a retailer who sells a product (or multiple products) over $T$ consecutive time periods and is subject…
Towards bridging classical optimal control and online learning, regret minimization has recently been proposed as a control design criterion. This competitive paradigm penalizes the loss relative to the optimal control actions chosen by a…