arXiv:2607. 28408v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This thesis studies policy learning in interactive systems where an agent observes a context, selects an action from a very large set, and receives partial feedback.
By Imad Aouali
arXiv:2606. 09124v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has enabled progress on reasoning-intensive tasks by relying on task-specific verifiers that provide automated correctness signals.
By Suhwan Kim, Taehyun Cho, Geon-Hyeong Kim, Yu Jin Kim, Youngsoo Jang, Moontae Lee, Jungwoo Lee
arXiv:2004. 06321v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study the sequential batch learning problem in linear contextual bandits with finite action sets, where the decision maker is constrained to split incoming individuals into (at most) a fixed number of batches and can only observe outcomes for the individuals within a batch at the batch's end.
By Yanjun Han, Zhengqing Zhou, Zihao Hu, Jose Blanchet, Peter W. Glynn, Yinyu Ye, Zhengyuan Zhou
The paper introduces a new approach to safety in contextual bandits with continuous actions by enforcing high‑probability constraints on the realized cost rather than on its expectation. It proposes the High‑Probability Constrained UCB algorithm, which balances optimistic reward exploration with pessimistic safety estimation. The authors provide theoretical regret guarantees for linear models and extend the analysis to general function classes, demonstrating experimentally that realized‑cost constraints significantly reduce safety violations compared to expected‑cost baselines.
The paper introduces online contextual matrix games, a framework that merges contextual bandits with multi‑player online games to handle dynamic contexts and strategic interactions. It presents OnGameLearn, an algorithm that balances exploration and exploitation across actions and contexts, providing statistical guarantees such as tail bounds, Nash equilibrium convergence, asymptotic normality, and sublinear regret. The authors also define a policy value for matrix games and propose a doubly robust, √T‑consistent estimator, demonstrating effectiveness through simulations and a hotel pricing case study.
By Liner Xiang, Yixin Wang, Hengrui Cai
arXiv:2509. 03456v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Off-policy evaluation (OPE) and off-policy learning (OPL) are foundational for decision-making in offline contextual bandits.
By Imad Aouali, Otmane Sakhi
arXiv:2606. 14929v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Modern recommendation systems increasingly rely on dynamically routing diverse queries to multiple embedding models.
By Yan Dai, Negin Golrezaei, Patrick Jaillet
arXiv:2606. 01382v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Preference alignment is central to improving large language models, but standard reward-based formulations can be restrictive when human preferences are cyclic, non-transitive, or otherwise not representable by a scalar reward.
By Tianlong Nan, Xiaopeng Li, Christian Kroer, Tianyi Lin
arXiv:2312.16730v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Interactive decision making is the problem of learning to act well in an unknown environment, using the data that one's own actions generate...
By Dylan J. Foster, Alexander Rakhlin
The paper introduces a new approach to safety in contextual bandits with continuous actions, focusing on high‑probability constraints on the realized cost rather than expected cost. It presents the High‑Probability Constrained UCB algorithm, which balances reward exploration with conservative safety estimation, and provides theoretical regret guarantees for linear models and extensions to general function classes. Experiments demonstrate that this realized‑cost safety framework significantly reduces safety violations compared to expected‑cost constrained methods.
By Spyros Dragazis, Aldo Pacchiano
arXiv:2607. 08979v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study the active learning problem of fixed-confidence top-$k$ identification from noisy pairwise comparisons.
By Motti Goldberger, Nils Rudi
arXiv:2510. 19528v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We investigate the fundamental problem of leveraging offline data to accelerate online reinforcement learning - a direction with strong potential but limited theoretical grounding.
By Sebastian Reboul, H\'el\`ene Halconruy