The paper introduces Generalised Bayesian Optimal Experimental Design (GBOED), extending generalised Bayesian inference to experimental design. It replaces the likelihood in Bayesian updates with a loss function, deriving a new acquisition function called Gibbs expected information gain. Empirical results show that GBOED improves robustness against outliers and mis-specified outcome noise distributions.
By Yasir Zubayr Barlas, Sabina J. Sloman, Samuel Kaski
arXiv:2608.16466v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Bayesian optimal experimental design (BOED) aims to collect informative data by optimizing an expected utility reflecting the goals of an exp...
By David Chen, Michael Evans, Xinwei Li, Prateek Bansal, David J. Nott
The paper explores how data from fixed A/B tests can guide the deployment of adaptive experiments using contextual bandits. By combining off‑policy evaluation with a controlled warm‑start simulation, the authors rank pre‑specified adaptive and non‑adaptive policies using doubly robust estimators. Experiments on synthetic trials and real benchmarks show that adaptive, context‑aware policies outperform fixed allocations when heterogeneity exists, but offer little advantage otherwise.
By Jo\~ao Victor Ferreira Alves, Eduardo Rocha Laurentino, Gustavo de Oliveira Kanno, Thiago Costa Rizuti da Rocha
arXiv:2606. 14581v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Granting LLMs direct control over costly, irreversible scientific experiments leads to unsafe exploration and unstable performance, but discarding LLM creativity entirely sacrifices significant optimization potential.
By Guanyu Liu, Weiyi Kong, Zeyu Wang, Boer Zhang, Baiqing Li, Peiyu Zhang, Tianyu Shi
arXiv:2607. 08335v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Policy-based approaches to Bayesian experimental design (BED) allow the learning of deep policy networks that adaptively make intelligent design decisions based on previously collected data.
By Angus Phillips, Gavin Kerrigan, Tom Rainforth
arXiv:2607. 16927v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We introduce Deep Adaptive Bayesian Screening (DABS), a method for performing adaptive factorial screening in high-dimensional discrete design spaces.
By Jade Lejeune Herman, Arno Strouwen, Johan A. K. Suykens, Peter Goos
The paper proposes a method to embed sequential Bayesian experimental design (BED) into large language models (LLMs) by training the models to reason about action selection using information-gain rewards. By specifying the experimental generative model separately from the LLM’s beliefs, the authors optimize expected information gain under a chosen model. Experiments on the Twenty Questions task show that the resulting policies outperform both inference- and training-time BED baselines while incurring lower computational costs, and the approach generalizes to unseen categories and transfers positively to the Medi-Q clinical dialogue benchmark.
By Anita Kriz, Antonin Berthon, Nicol\'as Astorga, Mihaela van der Schaar
arXiv:2607. 08590v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Scientific experiments are often designed to maximize information gain, yet in many applications the primary objective is to support reliable downstream decision-making.
By Haripriya Harikumar, Sammie Katt, Yasir Zubayr Barlas, Samuel Kaski
arXiv:2512. 22999v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We consider problems of parameter estimation where design variables can be actively optimized to maximize information gain.
By Niels Bracher, Lars K\"uhmichel, Desi R. Ivanova, Xavier Intes, Paul-Christian B\"urkner, Stefan T. Radev
The paper investigates how to collect data for recalibrating a misspecified simulator that models a partially observed real-world system as a fully observed Markovian process. It compares four data‑collection strategies: never recalibrating, passive on‑policy recalibration, continuous exploration across all units, and randomized experimentation on a sample of units. Theoretical analysis and a vending‑machine simulation show that experimentation can outperform passive adaptation when drift is invisible to on‑policy data or when recalibration lags behind ongoing drift, while exploration is preferable when trying worse actions is costly and dynamics may not have changed.
By Harsh Parikh, Gabriel Levin-Konigsberg, Sohrab Andaz, Akhil Bagaria, Dominique Perrault-Joncas, Alexander Volfovsky
arXiv:2608. 14425v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLM evaluations often use fixed sampling budgets, testing every item the same number of times even after estimates are precise.
By Toby D. Pilditch
arXiv:2602.07144v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular technique for sample-efficient optimization of black-box functions. In many applications, the parameters be...
By Samuel Daulton, David Eriksson, Maximilian Balandat, Eytan Bakshy