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Best-of-Both-Worlds Linear Contextual Bandits

Masahiro Kato, Shinji Ito

arXiv 27 Dec 2023 · Machine Learning

arXiv:2312.16489 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

This study investigates the problem of $K$-armed linear contextual bandits, an instance of the multi-armed bandit problem, under an adversarial corruption. At each round, a decision-maker observes an independent and identically distributed context and then selects an arm based on the context and past observations. After selecting an arm, the decision-maker incurs a loss corresponding to the selected arm. The decision-maker aims to minimize the cumulative loss over the trial. The goal of this study is to develop a strategy that is effective in both stochastic and adversarial environments, with theoretical guarantees. We first formulate the problem by introducing a novel setting of bandits with adversarial corruption, referred to as the contextual adversarial regime with a self-bounding constraint. We assume linear models for the relationship between the loss and the context. Then, we propose a strategy that extends the RealLinExp3 by Neu & Olkhovskaya (2020) and the Follow-The-Regularized-Leader (FTRL). The regret of our proposed algorithm is shown to be upper-bounded by $O\left(\min\left{\frac{(\log(T))^3}{\Delta_{*}} + \sqrt{\frac{C(\log(T))^3}{\Delta_{*}}},\ \ \sqrt{T}(\log(T))^2\right}\right)$, where $T \in\mathbb{N}$ is the number of rounds, $\Delta_{*} > 0$ is the constant minimum gap between the best and suboptimal arms for any context, and $C\in[0, T] $ is an adversarial corruption parameter. This regret upper bound implies $O\left(\frac{(\log(T))^3}{\Delta_{*}}\right)$ in a stochastic environment and by $O\left( \sqrt{T}(\log(T))^2\right)$ in an adversarial environment. We refer to our strategy as the Best-of-Both-Worlds (BoBW) RealFTRL, due to its theoretical guarantees in both stochastic and adversarial regimes.

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Gergely Neu and Julia Olkhovskaya (2020) Efficient and robust algorithms for adversarial linear contextual bandits1.000165100%
2Shinji Ito, Taira Tsuchiya, and Junya Honda (2022) Nearly optimal best-of-both-worlds algorithms for online learning with feedback graphs self1.00053100%
3Ke Li, Yun Yang, and Naveen N. Narisetty (2021) Regret lower bound and optimal algorithm for high-dimensional contextual linear bandit0.92843100%
4Jiafan He, Dongruo Zhou, Tong Zhang, and Quanquan Gu (2022) Nearly optimal algorithms for linear contextual bandits with adversarial corruptions0.87472100%
5Anupam Gupta, Tomer Koren, and Kunal Talwar (2019) Better algorithms for stochastic bandits with adversarial corruptions0.87452100%
6Thodoris Lykouris and Sergei Vassilvtiskii (2018) Competitive caching with machine learned advice0.87452100%
7Heyang Zhao, Dongruo Zhou, and Quanquan Gu (2021) Linear contextual bandits with adversarial corruptions, 20210.81142100%
8Haolin Liu, Chen-Yu Wei, and Julian Zimmert (2023) Bypassing the simulator: Near-optimal adversarial linear contextual bandits0.73732100%
9Yasin Abbasi-yadkori, Dávid Pál, and Csaba Szepesvári (2011) Improved algorithms for linear stochastic bandits0.58531100%
10Julian Zimmert and Yevgeny Seldin (2021) Tsallis-inf: An optimal algorithm for stochastic and adversarial bandits0.58531100%

Showing the top 10 of 38 scored citations.