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.
In this paper, we propose an information-theoretic exploration strategy for stochastic, discrete multi-armed bandits that achieves optimal regret. Our strategy is based on the value of information criterion. This criterion measures the trade-off between policy information and obtainable rewards. High amounts of policy …
This paper considers portfolio construction in a dynamic setting. We specify a loss function comprised of utility and complexity components with an unknown tradeoff parameter. We develop a novel regret-based criterion for selecting the tradeoff parameter to construct optimal sparse portfolios over time.
Efficient batch optimization with deterministic regret bounds for frequentist kernel methods.
problem Efficient batch optimization for frequentist kernel methods.
method Proposes a novel batch optimization algorithm that jointly maximizes the acquisition function and selects points from a whole batch.
result Theoretical regret bounds for noise-free and perturbation settings are derived, and adversarial regret bounds decrease with a smaller covering radius.
The paper automates policy learning for nonlinear welfare criteria using machine learning and debiasing techniques.
problem Learning optimal policies from observational data with nonlinear welfare criteria.
method Modeling a nonlinear welfare criterion with a utility function, estimating propensity scores with machine learning, and using sieve approximations and cross-validation for model selection.
result The proposed policy learning method satisfies oracle inequalities, providing theoretical guarantees on performance.
Online learning has traditionally focused on the expected rewards. In this paper, a risk-averse online learning problem under the performance measure of the mean-variance of the rewards is studied. Both the bandit and full information settings are considered. The performance of several existing policies is analyzed, an…
We consider a repeated newsvendor problem where the inventory manager has no prior information about the demand, and can access only censored/sales data. In analogy to multi-armed bandit problems, the manager needs to simultaneously "explore" and "exploit" with her inventory decisions, in order to minimize the cumulati…
Inventory control with unknown demand distribution is considered, with emphasis placed on the case involving discrete nonperishable items. We focus on an adaptive policy which in every period uses, as much as possible, the optimal newsvendor ordering quantity for the empirical distribution learned up to that period. Th…
ACP-UCB1 ranks arms based on upper-tail performance, improving stochastic bandit algorithms.
problem Stochastic bandit algorithms often favor arms with strong upper-tail performance, which is not well-addressed by classical mean-reward criteria.
method ACP-UCB1 combines an adaptive conformal estimate of the upper endpoint with a UCB-type optimism bonus.
result ACP-UCB1 achieves logarithmic upper-quantile regret with per-arm contribution \(O(
icefrac{\log n}{Δ_j^{\mathrm{ACP}}})\).
The problem of reinforcement learning in an unknown and discrete Markov Decision Process (MDP) under the average-reward criterion is considered, when the learner interacts with the system in a single stream of observations, starting from an initial state without any reset. We revisit the minimax lower bound for that pr…
Entropy Search (ES) and Predictive Entropy Search (PES) are popular and empirically successful Bayesian Optimization techniques. Both rely on a compelling information-theoretic motivation, and maximize the information gained about the argmax of the unknown function; yet, both are plagued by the expensive computatio…
Autonomous systems can substantially enhance a human's efficiency and effectiveness in complex environments. Machines, however, are often unable to observe the preferences of the humans that they serve. Despite the fact that the human's and machine's objectives are aligned, asymmetric information, along with heterogene…
This paper analyzes regret bounds for Gaussian process Thompson sampling.
problem Analyzing the performance of Gaussian process Thompson sampling (GP-TS) in Bayesian optimization.
method The paper derives several regret bounds for GP-TS, including a lower bound, upper bounds on the second moment of cumulative regret, expected lenient regret, and improved cumulative regret.
result The paper provides improved regret upper bounds for GP-TS, showing that it suffers from a polynomial dependence on 1/δ with probability δ.
We introduce a new criterion to determine the order of an autoregressive model fitted to time series data. It has the benefits of the two well-known model selection techniques, the Akaike information criterion and the Bayesian information criterion. When the data is generated from a finite order autoregression, the Bay…
The notion of \emph{policy regret} in online learning is a well defined? performance measure for the common scenario of adaptive adversaries, which more traditional quantities such as external regret do not take into account. We revisit the notion of policy regret and first show that there are online learning settings …
Online learning algorithms are designed to learn even when their input is generated by an adversary. The widely-accepted formal definition of an online algorithm's ability to learn is the game-theoretic notion of regret. We argue that the standard definition of regret becomes inadequate if the adversary is allowed to a…