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Register a new userSequential Experimental Design for Transductive Linear Bandits
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In this paper we introduce the transductive linear bandit problem: given a set of measurement vectors $mathcal{X}subset mathbb{R}^d$, a set of items $mathcal{Z}subset mathbb{R}^d$, a fixed confidence $delta$, and an unknown vector $theta^{ast}in mathbb{R}^d$, the goal is to infer $text{argmax}_{zin mathcal{Z}} z^toptheta^ast$ with probability $1-delta$ by making as few sequentially chosen noisy measurements of the form $x^toptheta^{ast}$ as possible. When $mathcal{X}=mathcal{Z}$, this setting generalizes linear bandits, and when $mathcal{X}$ is the standard basis vectors and $mathcal{Z}subset {0,1}^d$, combinatorial bandits. Such a transductive setting naturally arises when the set of measurement vectors is limited due to factors such as availability or cost. As an example, in drug discovery the compounds and dosages $mathcal{X}$ a practitioner may be willing to evaluate in the lab in vitro due to cost or safety reasons may differ vastly from those compounds and dosages $mathcal{Z}$ that can be safely administered to patients in vivo. Alternatively, in recommender systems for books, the set of books $mathcal{X}$ a user is queried about may be restricted to well known best-sellers even though the goal might be to recommend more esoteric titles $mathcal{Z}$. In this paper, we provide instance-dependent lower bounds for the transductive setting, an algorithm that matches these up to logarithmic factors, and an evaluation. In particular, we provide the first non-asymptotic algorithm for linear bandits that nearly achieves the information theoretic lower bound.
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We introduce Deep Adaptive Design (DAD), a method for amortizing the cost of adaptive Bayesian experimental design that allows experiments to be run in real-time. Traditional sequential Bayesian optimal experimental design approaches require substantial computation at each stage of the experiment. This makes them unsuitable for most real-world applications, where decisions must typically be made quickly. DAD addresses this restriction by learning an amortized design network upfront and then using this to rapidly run (multiple) adaptive experiments at deployment time. This network represents a design policy which takes as input the data from previous steps, and outputs the next design using a single forward pass; these design decisions can be made in milliseconds during the live experiment. To train the network, we introduce contrastive information bounds that are suitable objectives for the sequential setting, and propose a customized network architecture that exploits key symmetries. We demonstrate that DAD successfully amortizes the process of experimental design, outperforming alternative strategies on a number of problems.
In this work, we study sequential choice bandits with feedback. We propose bandit algorithms for a platform that personalizes users experience to maximize its rewards. For each action directed to a given user, the platform is given a positive reward, which is a non-decreasing function of the action, if this action is below the users threshold. Users are equipped with a patience budget, and actions that are above the threshold decrease the users patience. When all patience is lost, the user abandons the platform. The platform attempts to learn the thresholds of the users in order to maximize its rewards, based on two different feedback models describing the information pattern available to the platform at each action. We define a notion of regret by determining the best action to be taken when the platform knows that the users threshold is in a given interval. We then propose bandit algorithms for the two feedback models and show that upper and lower bounds on the regret are of the order of $tilde{O}(N^{2/3})$ and $tildeOmega(N^{2/3})$, respectively, where $N$ is the total number of users. Finally, we show that the waiting time of any user before receiving a personalized experience is uniform in $N$.
Standard approaches to decision-making under uncertainty focus on sequential exploration of the space of decisions. However, textit{simultaneously} proposing a batch of decisions, which leverages available resources for parallel experimentation, has the potential to rapidly accelerate exploration. We present a family of (parallel) contextual linear bandit algorithms, whose regret is nearly identical to their perfectly sequential counterparts -- given access to the same total number of oracle queries -- up to a lower-order burn-in term that is dependent on the context-set geometry. We provide matching information-theoretic lower bounds on parallel regret performance to establish our algorithms are asymptotically optimal in the time horizon. Finally, we also present an empirical evaluation of these parallel algorithms in several domains, including materials discovery and biological sequence design problems, to demonstrate the utility of parallelized bandits in practical settings.
Stochastic sparse linear bandits offer a practical model for high-dimensional online decision-making problems and have a rich information-regret structure. In this work we explore the use of information-directed sampling (IDS), which naturally balances the information-regret trade-off. We develop a class of information-theoretic Bayesian regret bounds that nearly match existing lower bounds on a variety of problem instances, demonstrating the adaptivity of IDS. To efficiently implement sparse IDS, we propose an empirical Bayesian approach for sparse posterior sampling using a spike-and-slab Gaussian-Laplace prior. Numerical results demonstrate significant regret reductions by sparse IDS relative to several baselines.
Stochastic linear bandits with high-dimensional sparse features are a practical model for a variety of domains, including personalized medicine and online advertising. We derive a novel $Omega(n^{2/3})$ dimension-free minimax regret lower bound for sparse linear bandits in the data-poor regime where the horizon is smaller than the ambient dimension and where the feature vectors admit a well-conditioned exploration distribution. This is complemented by a nearly matching upper bound for an explore-then-commit algorithm showing that that $Theta(n^{2/3})$ is the optimal rate in the data-poor regime. The results complement existing bounds for the data-rich regime and provide another example where carefully balancing the trade-off between information and regret is necessary. Finally, we prove a dimension-free $O(sqrt{n})$ regret upper bound under an additional assumption on the magnitude of the signal for relevant features.
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