Optimal Top-$k$ Identification from Pairwise Comparisons
arXiv:2607. 08979v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study the active learning problem of fixed-confidence top-$k$ identification from noisy pairwise comparisons.
The paper introduces Online Hyperparameter Optimization (OHPO), framing it as an infinitely many‑armed bandit problem over mixed and conditional search spaces. It proposes the IMABO framework, which couples any bandit policy with any oracle for proposing new configurations, and presents IMOSS—a restart‑free anytime policy with provable regret bounds. Experiments show that IMABO, combined with practical oracles such as TPE, an incumbent‑mutation oracle, and a pretrained tabular foundation model, outperforms random search across a range of settings from classical ML models to LLM‑based agents.
arXiv:2607. 08979v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study the active learning problem of fixed-confidence top-$k$ identification from noisy pairwise comparisons.
arXiv:2607. 29460v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Heavy-tailed distributions arise naturally in sequential decision-making problems such as financial investment, online advertising, and network management, where rare but extreme outcomes can dominate performance.
arXiv:2602. 09456v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We propose an algorithmic framework, Offline Estimation to Decisions (OE2D), that efficiently reduces contextual bandit learning with general reward function approximation to offline regression.
arXiv:2606. 09802v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We consider a variant of the linear contextual stochastic multi-armed bandits, where the learner must provide recommendations to a group of users, each having its personalized preference vector, and in the presence of context distributions that are drifting over time.
arXiv:2605. 09454v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We study the $\textit{single-index bandit}$ problem, where rewards depend on an unknown one-dimensional projection of high-dimensional contexts through an unknown reward function.
arXiv:2603. 21180v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Sequential experimental design under expensive, gradient-free objectives is a central challenge in computational statistics: evaluation budgets are tightly constrained and information must be extracted efficiently from each observation.
arXiv:2510. 21431v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We study the combinatorial semi-bandit problem where an agent selects a subset of base arms and receives individual feedback.
arXiv:2607. 23765v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) achieve impressive performance across multiple domains, but using the most capable model for every query is prohibitive at scale.
arXiv:2605. 20854v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study a stochastic bandit algorithm motivated by retry-aware objectives that value the best outcome among multiple attempts, such as pass@$k$ and max@$k$.
arXiv:2605. 00762v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study meritocratic fairness in budgeted combinatorial multi-armed bandits with full-bandit feedback, where a learner selects at most $K$ arms per time step and observes only the noisy aggregate reward of the selected set.
arXiv:2607. 02891v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Many online decision-making problems involve both round-specific feasible actions and drifting reward models: eligible ad impressions, feasible prices, and available treatments can change over time, while user preferences, demand curves, and patient responses may evolve.
arXiv:2607. 29241v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Optimizing modern recommender models still depends heavily on engineers manually iterating over architectural, objective, and training-strategy changes.