Second Order Bounds for Contextual Bandits with Function Approximation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Pacchiano, Aldo
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Pacchiano, Aldo
author_facet Pacchiano, Aldo
contents Many works have developed no-regret algorithms for contextual bandits with function approximation, where the mean reward function over context-action pairs belongs to a function class. Although there are many approaches to this problem, one that has gained in importance is the use of algorithms based on the optimism principle such as optimistic least squares. It can be shown the regret of this algorithm scales as square root of the product of the eluder dimension (a statistical measure of the complexity of the function class), the logarithm of the function class size and the time horizon. Unfortunately, even if the variance of the measurement noise of the rewards at each time is changing and is very small, the regret of the optimistic least squares algorithm scales with square root of the time horizon. In this work we are the first to develop algorithms that satisfy regret bounds of scaling not with the square root of the time horizon, but the square root of the sum of the measurement variances in the setting of contextual bandits with function approximation when the variances are unknown. These bounds generalize existing techniques for deriving second order bounds in contextual linear problems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_16197
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Second Order Bounds for Contextual Bandits with Function Approximation
Pacchiano, Aldo
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Many works have developed no-regret algorithms for contextual bandits with function approximation, where the mean reward function over context-action pairs belongs to a function class. Although there are many approaches to this problem, one that has gained in importance is the use of algorithms based on the optimism principle such as optimistic least squares. It can be shown the regret of this algorithm scales as square root of the product of the eluder dimension (a statistical measure of the complexity of the function class), the logarithm of the function class size and the time horizon. Unfortunately, even if the variance of the measurement noise of the rewards at each time is changing and is very small, the regret of the optimistic least squares algorithm scales with square root of the time horizon. In this work we are the first to develop algorithms that satisfy regret bounds of scaling not with the square root of the time horizon, but the square root of the sum of the measurement variances in the setting of contextual bandits with function approximation when the variances are unknown. These bounds generalize existing techniques for deriving second order bounds in contextual linear problems.
title Second Order Bounds for Contextual Bandits with Function Approximation
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.16197