Related papers: Q-Learning with Fine-Grained Gap-Dependent Regret

We study the online restless bandit problem, where the state of each arm evolves according to a Markov chain, and the reward of pulling an arm depends on both the pulled arm and the current state of the corresponding Markov chain. In this…

We study the noise-free Gaussian Process (GP) bandits problem, in which the learner seeks to minimize regret through noise-free observations of the black-box objective function lying on the known reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS).…

We study contextual bandits with budget and time constraints, referred to as constrained contextual bandits.The time and budget constraints significantly complicate the exploration and exploitation tradeoff because they introduce complex…

We develop parameter-free algorithms for unconstrained online learning with regret guarantees that scale with the gradient variation $V_T(u) = \sum_{t=2}^T \|\nabla f_t(u)-\nabla f_{t-1}(u)\|^2$. For $L$-smooth convex loss, we provide…

Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are one of the common ways to model safe reinforcement learning problems, where constraint functions model the safety objectives. Lagrangian-based dual or primal-dual algorithms provide…

We consider the combinatorial multi-armed bandit (CMAB) problem, where the reward function is nonlinear. In this setting, the agent chooses a batch of arms on each round and receives feedback from each arm of the batch. The reward that the…

In the regret-based formulation of Multi-armed Bandit (MAB) problems, except in rare instances, much of the literature focuses on arms with i.i.d. rewards. In this paper, we consider the problem of obtaining regret guarantees for MAB…

We consider the problem of learning to optimize an unknown Markov decision process (MDP). We show that, if the MDP can be parameterized within some known function class, we can obtain regret bounds that scale with the dimensionality, rather…

We consider the problem of controlling an unknown linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) system consisting of multiple subsystems connected over a network. Our goal is to minimize and quantify the regret (i.e. loss in performance) of our strategy…

We introduce causal Markov Decision Processes (C-MDPs), a new formalism for sequential decision making which combines the standard MDP formulation with causal structures over state transition and reward functions. Many contemporary and…

In this work, we give a statistical characterization of the $\gamma$-regret for arbitrary structured bandit problems, the regret which arises when comparing against a benchmark that is $\gamma$ times the optimal solution. The…

We study the challenging exploration incentive problem in both bandit and reinforcement learning, where the rewards are scale-free and potentially unbounded, driven by real-world scenarios and differing from existing work. Past works in…

By leveraging the representation power of deep neural networks, neural upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithms have shown success in contextual bandits. To further balance the exploration and exploitation, we propose…

The expected regret of any reinforcement learning algorithm is lower bounded by $\Omega\left(\sqrt{DXAT}\right)$ for undiscounted returns, where $D$ is the diameter of the Markov decision process, $X$ the size of the state space, $A$ the…

This paper establishes that optimistic algorithms attain gap-dependent and non-asymptotic logarithmic regret for episodic MDPs. In contrast to prior work, our bounds do not suffer a dependence on diameter-like quantities or ergodicity, and…

We study an extension of standard bandit problem in which there are R layers of experts. Multi-layered experts make selections layer by layer and only the experts in the last layer can play arms. The goal of the learning policy is to…

This paper studies model-based reinforcement learning (RL) for regret minimization. We focus on finite-horizon episodic RL where the transition model $P$ belongs to a known family of models $\mathcal{P}$, a special case of which is when…

Classic no-regret multi-armed bandit algorithms, including the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB), Hedge, and EXP3, are inherently unfair by design. Their unfairness stems from their objective of playing the most rewarding arm as frequently as…

We present a new recommendation setting for picking out two items from a given set to be highlighted to a user, based on contextual input. These two items are presented to a user who chooses one of them, possibly stochastically, with a bias…

We take initial steps in studying PAC-MDP algorithms with limited adaptivity, that is, algorithms that change its exploration policy as infrequently as possible during regret minimization. This is motivated by the difficulty of running…