arXiv:2502. 01226v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Gaussian process (GP) bandits provide a powerful framework for performing blackbox optimization of unknown functions.
By Jack Sandberg, Morteza Haghir Chehreghani
arXiv:2502. 13467v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The $K$-Max combinatorial multi-armed bandit problem arises in applications such as recommendation and distributed decision making, where the reward is determined by the maximum outcome among $K$ selected arms.
By Yu Chen, Siwei Wang, Longbo Huang, Wei Chen
arXiv:2606. 11171v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We develop indexed Bellman information complexity, a representation-level theory of interactive decision making centered on information indices and reference histories.
By Yunbei Xu
arXiv:2512. 00517v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Sequential optimization of black-box functions from noisy evaluations has been widely studied, with Gaussian Process bandit algorithms such as GP-UCB guaranteeing no-regret in stationary settings.
By Eliabelle Mauduit, Elo\"ise Berthier, Andrea Simonetto
The paper investigates stochastic contextual bandits in an agnostic setting, aiming to compete with the best policy in a given class without assuming realizability or specific loss/reward models. It introduces an algorithm that updates the policy each round by minimizing a pessimistic objective— a clipped inverse‑propensity estimate of the policy value plus a variance penalty— and proves the first fast regret rates relative to the best‑in‑class policy. By exploiting entropy assumptions on the policy class and a H"olderian error‑bound condition, the authors achieve fast best‑in‑class regret rates, including polylogarithmic rates in the parametric case, using a sequential self‑normalized maximal inequality for bounded martingale empirical processes to derive uniform variance‑adaptive confidence bounds and ensure pessimism under adaptive data collection.
By Samuel Girard, Aurelien Bibaut, Arthur Gretton, Nathan Kallus, Houssam Zenati
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