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Related papers: Adaptive Off-Policy Inference for M-Estimators Und…

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We establish an asymptotic framework for the statistical analysis of the stochastic contextual multi-armed bandit problem (CMAB), which is widely employed in adaptively randomized experiments across various fields. While algorithms for…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-05-21 Ramon van den Akker , Bas J. M. Werker , Bo Zhou

We introduce data-driven decision-making algorithms that achieve state-of-the-art \emph{dynamic regret} bounds for non-stationary bandit settings. These settings capture applications such as advertisement allocation, dynamic pricing, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-19 Wang Chi Cheung , David Simchi-Levi , Ruihao Zhu

This manuscript studies a general approach to construct confidence sets for the solution of stochastic optimization, rendering empirical risk minimization as special cases. Statistical inference for stochastic optimization poses significant…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-05-22 Kenta Takatsu , Arun Kumar Kuchibhotla

Off-policy evaluation (OPE) is a method for estimating the return of a target policy using some pre-collected observational data generated by a potentially different behavior policy. In some cases, there may be unmeasured variables that can…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-03 Yang Xu , Jin Zhu , Chengchun Shi , Shikai Luo , Rui Song

In many biomedical, science, and engineering problems, one must sequentially decide which action to take next so as to maximize rewards. One general class of algorithms for optimizing interactions with the world, while simultaneously…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-05-05 Iñigo Urteaga , Chris H. Wiggins

We study the constrained variant of the \emph{multi-armed bandit} (MAB) problem, in which the learner aims not only at minimizing the total loss incurred during the learning dynamic, but also at controlling the violation of multiple…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Francesco Emanuele Stradi , Kalana Kalupahana , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We study optimal procedures for estimating a linear functional based on observational data. In many problems of this kind, a widely used assumption is strict overlap, i.e., uniform boundedness of the importance ratio, which measures how…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-01-18 Wenlong Mou , Peng Ding , Martin J. Wainwright , Peter L. Bartlett

We develop confidence bounds that hold uniformly over time for off-policy evaluation in the contextual bandit setting. These confidence sequences are based on recent ideas from martingale analysis and are non-asymptotic, non-parametric, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-19 Nikos Karampatziakis , Paul Mineiro , Aaditya Ramdas

Evaluation of treatment effects and more general estimands is typically achieved via parametric modelling, which is unsatisfactory since model misspecification is likely. Data-adaptive model building (e.g. statistical/machine learning) is…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-01-14 Oliver Hines , Oliver Dukes , Karla Diaz-Ordaz , Stijn Vansteelandt

Pre-trained foundation models (FMs) have shown exceptional performance in univariate time series forecasting tasks. However, several practical challenges persist, including managing intricate dependencies among features and quantifying…

A pervasive phenomenon in machine learning applications is distribution shift, where training and deployment conditions for a machine learning model differ. As distribution shift typically results in a degradation in performance, much…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-01-23 Philip Amortila , Tongyi Cao , Akshay Krishnamurthy

Off-policy evaluation (OPE) methods allow us to compute the expected reward of a policy by using the logged data collected by a different policy. OPE is a viable alternative to running expensive online A/B tests: it can speed up the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-23 Matej Cief , Jacek Golebiowski , Philipp Schmidt , Ziawasch Abedjan , Artur Bekasov

In bandit algorithms, the randomly time-varying adaptive experimental design makes it difficult to apply traditional limit theorems to off-policy evaluation of the treatment effect. Moreover, the normal approximation by the central limit…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-04-11 Yechan Park , Nakahiro Yoshida

We introduce the model selection problem in pure exploration linear bandits, where the learner needs to adapt to the instance-dependent complexity measure of the smallest hypothesis class containing the true model. We design algorithms in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-18 Yinglun Zhu , Julian Katz-Samuels , Robert Nowak

Off-policy evaluation in reinforcement learning offers the chance of using observational data to improve future outcomes in domains such as healthcare and education, but safe deployment in high stakes settings requires ways of assessing its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-12 Omer Gottesman , Joseph Futoma , Yao Liu , Sonali Parbhoo , Leo Anthony Celi , Emma Brunskill , Finale Doshi-Velez

Online reinforcement learning and other adaptive sampling algorithms are increasingly used in digital intervention experiments to optimize treatment delivery for users over time. In this work, we focus on longitudinal user data collected by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-20 Kelly W. Zhang , Lucas Janson , Susan A. Murphy

We present and prove properties of a new offline policy evaluator for an exploration learning setting which is superior to previous evaluators. In particular, it simultaneously and correctly incorporates techniques from importance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-10-19 Miroslav Dudik , Dumitru Erhan , John Langford , Lihong Li

Automated decision-making algorithms drive applications such as recommendation systems and search engines. These algorithms often rely on off-policy contextual bandits or off-policy learning (OPL). Conventionally, OPL selects actions that…

This work focuses on off-policy evaluation (OPE) with function approximation in infinite-horizon undiscounted Markov decision processes (MDPs). For MDPs that are ergodic and linear (i.e. where rewards and dynamics are linear in some known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-24 Nevena Lazic , Dong Yin , Mehrdad Farajtabar , Nir Levine , Dilan Gorur , Chris Harris , Dale Schuurmans

This paper investigates the problem of online prediction learning, where learning proceeds continuously as the agent interacts with an environment. The predictions made by the agent are contingent on a particular way of behaving,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-08 Sina Ghiassian , Andrew Patterson , Martha White , Richard S. Sutton , Adam White