Practical Efficient Global Optimization is No-regret

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Wang, Jingyi, Wang, Haowei, Chiang, Nai-Yuan, Mueller, Juliane, Hartland, Tucker, Petra, Cosmin G.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Wang, Jingyi
Wang, Haowei
Chiang, Nai-Yuan
Mueller, Juliane
Hartland, Tucker
Petra, Cosmin G.
author_facet Wang, Jingyi
Wang, Haowei
Chiang, Nai-Yuan
Mueller, Juliane
Hartland, Tucker
Petra, Cosmin G.
contents Efficient global optimization (EGO) is one of the most widely used noise-free Bayesian optimization algorithms.It comprises the Gaussian process (GP) surrogate model and expected improvement (EI) acquisition function. In practice, when EGO is applied, a scalar matrix of a small positive value (also called a nugget or jitter) is usually added to the covariance matrix of the deterministic GP to improve numerical stability. We refer to this EGO with a positive nugget as the practical EGO. Despite its wide adoption and empirical success, to date, cumulative regret bounds for practical EGO have yet to be established. In this paper, we present for the first time the cumulative regret upper bound of practical EGO. In particular, we show that practical EGO has sublinear cumulative regret bounds and thus is a no-regret algorithm for commonly used kernels including the squared exponential (SE) and Matérn kernels ($ν>\frac{1}{2}$). Moreover, we analyze the effect of the nugget on the regret bound and discuss the theoretical implication on its choice. Numerical experiments are conducted to support and validate our findings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_25311
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Practical Efficient Global Optimization is No-regret
Wang, Jingyi
Wang, Haowei
Chiang, Nai-Yuan
Mueller, Juliane
Hartland, Tucker
Petra, Cosmin G.
Machine Learning
Efficient global optimization (EGO) is one of the most widely used noise-free Bayesian optimization algorithms.It comprises the Gaussian process (GP) surrogate model and expected improvement (EI) acquisition function. In practice, when EGO is applied, a scalar matrix of a small positive value (also called a nugget or jitter) is usually added to the covariance matrix of the deterministic GP to improve numerical stability. We refer to this EGO with a positive nugget as the practical EGO. Despite its wide adoption and empirical success, to date, cumulative regret bounds for practical EGO have yet to be established. In this paper, we present for the first time the cumulative regret upper bound of practical EGO. In particular, we show that practical EGO has sublinear cumulative regret bounds and thus is a no-regret algorithm for commonly used kernels including the squared exponential (SE) and Matérn kernels ($ν>\frac{1}{2}$). Moreover, we analyze the effect of the nugget on the regret bound and discuss the theoretical implication on its choice. Numerical experiments are conducted to support and validate our findings.
title Practical Efficient Global Optimization is No-regret
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25311