Processing math: 100%
Skip to yearly menu bar Skip to main content


Poster

Impact of Representation Learning in Linear Bandits

Jiaqi Yang · Wei Hu · Jason Lee · Simon Du

Keywords: [ representation learning ] [ multi-task learning ] [ linear bandits ]


Abstract: We study how representation learning can improve the efficiency of bandit problems. We study the setting where we play T linear bandits with dimension d concurrently, and these T bandit tasks share a common k(d) dimensional linear representation. For the finite-action setting, we present a new algorithm which achieves ˜O(TkN+dkNT) regret, where N is the number of rounds we play for each bandit. When T is sufficiently large, our algorithm significantly outperforms the naive algorithm (playing T bandits independently) that achieves ˜O(TdN) regret. We also provide an Ω(TkN+dkNT) regret lower bound, showing that our algorithm is minimax-optimal up to poly-logarithmic factors. Furthermore, we extend our algorithm to the infinite-action setting and obtain a corresponding regret bound which demonstrates the benefit of representation learning in certain regimes. We also present experiments on synthetic and real-world data to illustrate our theoretical findings and demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms.

Chat is not available.