Exploration via linearly perturbed loss minimisation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Janz, David, Liu, Shuai, Ayoub, Alex, Szepesvári, Csaba
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Janz, David
Liu, Shuai
Ayoub, Alex
Szepesvári, Csaba
author_facet Janz, David
Liu, Shuai
Ayoub, Alex
Szepesvári, Csaba
contents We introduce exploration via linear loss perturbations (EVILL), a randomised exploration method for structured stochastic bandit problems that works by solving for the minimiser of a linearly perturbed regularised negative log-likelihood function. We show that, for the case of generalised linear bandits, EVILL reduces to perturbed history exploration (PHE), a method where exploration is done by training on randomly perturbed rewards. In doing so, we provide a simple and clean explanation of when and why random reward perturbations give rise to good bandit algorithms. We propose data-dependent perturbations not present in previous PHE-type methods that allow EVILL to match the performance of Thompson-sampling-style parameter-perturbation methods, both in theory and in practice. Moreover, we show an example outside generalised linear bandits where PHE leads to inconsistent estimates, and thus linear regret, while EVILL remains performant. Like PHE, EVILL can be implemented in just a few lines of code.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_07565
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exploration via linearly perturbed loss minimisation
Janz, David
Liu, Shuai
Ayoub, Alex
Szepesvári, Csaba
Machine Learning
We introduce exploration via linear loss perturbations (EVILL), a randomised exploration method for structured stochastic bandit problems that works by solving for the minimiser of a linearly perturbed regularised negative log-likelihood function. We show that, for the case of generalised linear bandits, EVILL reduces to perturbed history exploration (PHE), a method where exploration is done by training on randomly perturbed rewards. In doing so, we provide a simple and clean explanation of when and why random reward perturbations give rise to good bandit algorithms. We propose data-dependent perturbations not present in previous PHE-type methods that allow EVILL to match the performance of Thompson-sampling-style parameter-perturbation methods, both in theory and in practice. Moreover, we show an example outside generalised linear bandits where PHE leads to inconsistent estimates, and thus linear regret, while EVILL remains performant. Like PHE, EVILL can be implemented in just a few lines of code.
title Exploration via linearly perturbed loss minimisation
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.07565