Research
On-device research index

arXiv research

A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.

168,695 papers · 148 categories

Trend · papers per month

19375674 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for Exploration-exploitation trade-off

Paper develops a dynamic Bayesian approach for active learning that optimizes exploration-exploitation balance.

problem Balancing exploration and exploitation in active learning for unknown functions.
method Develops BHEEM, a Bayesian hierarchical approach with approximate Bayesian computation for sampling trade-off parameters.
result BHEEM achieves at least 21% and 11% improvement over pure exploration and exploitation strategies respectively.

We develop a coherent framework for integrative simultaneous analysis of the exploration-exploitation and model order selection trade-offs. We improve over our preceding results on the same subject (Seldin et al., 2011) by combining PAC-Bayesian analysis with Bernstein-type inequality for martingales. Such a combinatio…

2011-05-23abs ↗pdf ↗

Batch Thompson Sampling reduces exploration-exploitation trade-off in online decision making.

problem Balancing exploration and exploitation in online decision making.
method Introducing a batch Thompson Sampling framework for stochastic multi-arm bandit and linear contextual bandit problems.
result Achieves asymptotic regret bound with O(logT)O(\log T) batch queries, significantly reducing interactions.

Improved Bayesian optimisation method using randomised Gaussian process UCB.

problem Improving performance in Bayesian optimisation.
method Developed a modified Gaussian process upper confidence bound (GP-UCB) acquisition function.
result The method achieves better performance than GP-UCB in various problems.

Bayesian optimization offers the possibility of optimizing black-box operations not accessible through traditional techniques. The success of Bayesian optimization methods such as Expected Improvement (EI) are significantly affected by the degree of trade-off between exploration and exploitation. Too much exploration c…

2018-07-03abs ↗pdf ↗

ICEE learns new RL tasks in less time with a Transformer model.

problem Efficient in-context policy learning for reinforcement learning.
method In-context Exploration-Exploitation (ICEE) algorithm that optimizes efficiency without explicit Bayesian inference.
result ICEE solves Bayesian optimization problems as efficiently as Gaussian process biased methods but in significantly less time.

Algorithm achieves optimal pricing with minimal exploration for dynamic markets.

problem Optimal pricing in dynamic markets with contextual information.
method Localized exploration-then-commit (LetC) algorithm with pure exploration, refinement, and exploitation stages.
result Achieves minimax optimal, dimension-free regret bound.

New framework for RL with linear-convex models reduces performance gap.

problem Continuous-time episodic reinforcement learning with unknown coefficients and convex objectives.
method Probabilistic framework and phase-based learning algorithm for optimal exploration-exploitation trade-off.
result Sublinear regrets achieved, matching best possible results in literature.

NeuralRBMLE tackles explore-exploit trade-offs in contextual bandits with neural networks.

problem Stochastic contextual bandit problem with general bounded reward functions.
method Reward-biased maximum likelihood estimation with neural networks to enforce exploration.
result Both NeuralRBMLE variants achieve O~(T)\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\sqrt{T}) regret.

Survey on risk-aware multi-armed bandits for better decision-making.

problem Risk measures in multi-armed bandits for better decision-making.
method Review of existing research, definition of risk-aware bandit problems, and algorithms for minimizing regret and identifying best arms.
result Consolidation and summarization of existing research on risk measures in multi-armed bandits.

Improved control approach for correlated bandits with better performance.

problem General multi-armed bandit problem with correlated elements.
method Introducing entropy regularisation to obtain a smooth asymptotic approximation of the value function, leading to a semi-index approximation of the optimal decision process.
result Performance of Asymptotic Randomised Control (ARC) algorithm compares favorably with other approaches.

Paper proposes efficient sample collection strategy for RL.

problem Balancing exploration and exploitation in reinforcement learning.
method Decoupled approach with objective-specific and objective-agnostic strategies.
result Improved or novel sample complexity guarantees for various RL settings.

Contextual bandits have the same exploration-exploitation trade-off as standard multi-armed bandits. On adding positive externalities that decay with time, this problem becomes much more difficult as wrong decisions at the start are hard to recover from. We explore existing policies in this setting and highlight their …

2019-11-14abs ↗pdf ↗

This research tackles balancing exploration and exploitation in deep RL for partially observable systems.

problem Balancing exploration and exploitation in deep RL for partially observable systems.
method Deployed and tested several techniques including adaptive and deterministic exploration strategies, and a modified quadratic loss function.
result Adaptive methods better approximate the trade-off between exploration and exploitation.

The paper analyzes CMDPs, balancing exploration and exploitation to avoid constraint violations.

problem Balancing exploration and exploitation in CMDPs to satisfy constraints.
method Two approaches: optimistic planning and incremental updates of primal and dual variables.
result Both approaches achieve sublinear regret on utility and constraint violations, with stronger guarantees for the linear programming approach.

We propose a generic, Bayesian, information geometric approach to the exploration--exploitation trade-off in multi-armed bandit problems. Our approach, BelMan, uniformly supports pure exploration, exploration--exploitation, and two-phase bandit problems. The knowledge on bandit arms and their reward distributions is su…

2018-05-04abs ↗pdf ↗

A reinforcement learning agent tries to maximize its cumulative payoff by interacting in an unknown environment. It is important for the agent to explore suboptimal actions as well as to pick actions with highest known rewards. Yet, in sensitive domains, collecting more data with exploration is not always possible, but…

2019-01-21abs ↗pdf ↗

The exploration-exploitation trade-off is among the central challenges of reinforcement learning. The optimal Bayesian solution is intractable in general. This paper studies to what extent analytic statements about optimal learning are possible if all beliefs are Gaussian processes. A first order approximation of learn…

2011-06-04abs ↗pdf ↗

EDU method finds diverse optimal solutions for expensive simulators.

problem Optimizing expensive black-box simulators for diverse solutions.
method EDU method searches for diverse locally-optimal solutions within a tolerance level.
result EDU yields a closed-form acquisition function facilitating efficient sequential queries.

Meta-SAC automatically tunes SAC's entropy temperature for better exploration.

problem Exploration-exploitation dilemma in reinforcement learning.
method Meta-SAC uses metagradient and a novel meta objective to automatically adjust SAC's entropy temperature.
result Meta-SAC outperforms SAC-v2 by 10% on the humanoid-v2 task.

This paper analyzes the multi-armed bandit problem using frequency-domain methods.

problem The exploration-exploitation trade-off in sequential decision-making.
method Proposes a frequency-domain analysis framework, reformulating the bandit process as a signal processing problem.
result Confidence bound term in UCB algorithm is equivalent to a time-varying gain in frequency domain.

We describe MELEE, a meta-learning algorithm for learning a good exploration policy in the interactive contextual bandit setting. Here, an algorithm must take actions based on contexts, and learn based only on a reward signal from the action taken, thereby generating an exploration/exploitation trade-off. MELEE address…

2019-01-23abs ↗pdf ↗

We introduce a new, efficient, principled and backpropagation-compatible algorithm for learning a probability distribution on the weights of a neural network, called Bayes by Backprop. It regularises the weights by minimising a compression cost, known as the variational free energy or the expected lower bound on the ma…

2015-05-20abs ↗pdf ↗

New algorithms improve contextual bandits with neural networks and energy models.

problem Inefficient exploration in non-linear models for contextual bandits.
method Maximum entropy exploration using neural networks and energy models.
result Both techniques outperform standard algorithms, with energy models best overall.

A simple uncertainty measure improves deep bandit performance.

problem Efficient exploration in complex environments with deep neural networks.
method Sample Average Uncertainty (SAU) for estimating outcome uncertainty directly.
result SAU matches the uncertainty of Thompson Sampling and its regret bounds.

Gradient-based methods are often used for policy optimization in deep reinforcement learning, despite being vulnerable to local optima and saddle points. Although gradient-free methods (e.g., genetic algorithms or evolution strategies) help mitigate these issues, poor initialization and local optima are still concerns …

2019-12-23abs ↗pdf ↗

Study examines impact of missing data on multi-armed bandit algorithms.

problem Impact of missing data on performance of multi-armed bandit algorithms.
method Extensive simulation study of two-armed bandit algorithms with binary outcomes, considering different probabilities of missingness.
result Impact on performance varies depending on the balance between exploration and exploitation.

We consider a finite-horizon multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in a Bayesian setting, for which we propose an information relaxation sampling framework. With this framework, we define an intuitive family of control policies that include Thompson sampling (TS) and the Bayesian optimal policy as endpoints. Analogous to TS…

2019-02-12abs ↗pdf ↗

Control of non-episodic, finite-horizon dynamical systems with uncertain dynamics poses a tough and elementary case of the exploration-exploitation trade-off. Bayesian reinforcement learning, reasoning about the effect of actions and future observations, offers a principled solution, but is intractable. We review, then…

2015-10-13abs ↗pdf ↗

Improved analysis of UCRL2 with empirical Bernstein inequality reduces exploration-exploitation regret.

problem Exploration-exploitation in communicating Markov Decision Processes.
method Analysis of UCRL2 with Empirical Bernstein inequalities (UCRL2B).
result Regret bound of O~(DΓSAT)\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{DΓS A T}) for UCRL2B.

Stable matching, a classical model for two-sided markets, has long been studied with little consideration for how each side's preferences are learned. With the advent of massive online markets powered by data-driven matching platforms, it has become necessary to better understand the interplay between learning and mark…

2019-06-12abs ↗pdf ↗

Quantum RL algorithm achieves logarithmic regret for exploration.

problem Designing efficient quantum RL algorithms for exploration.
method UCRL-style quantum algorithm with lazy updating and quantum estimation.
result Proves O(poly(S,A,H,logT))\mathcal{O}(\mathrm{poly}(S, A, H, \log T)) worst-case regret.

We stabilize the Kumaraswamy distribution for efficient sampling and differentiation.

problem Numerical instabilities in the Kumaraswamy distribution's inverse CDF and log-pdf.
method Identified and resolved numerical issues, introduced a stabilized KS distribution.
result Stabilized Kumaraswamy distribution supports efficient sampling and differentiation.