首个兼顾对抗与随机场景的重尾线性老虎机算法
Heavy-tailed Linear Bandits: Adversarial Robustness, Best-of-both-worlds, and Beyond
- 设计奖励估计加奖金项的FTRL框架,突破传统假设限制
- 在对抗环境下实现$ ilde{O}(T^{1/\varepsilon})$后悔率,随机环境下$ ilde{O}("log T)$
- 适用于存在重尾噪声的高维决策问题,适合强化学习研究者
重尾老虎机自 extcite{Bubeck2012BanditsWH}以来备受关注。尽管近年来重尾线性老虎机因能高效处理大量动作与重尾噪声而受到重视,但现有研究几乎局限于随机环境,仅少数工作涉及特殊情形的重尾多臂老虎机(MABs)。本文提出一个通用框架,对损失估计进行奖金项调整后执行跟随正则化领导者(FTRL)算法。通过精心设计奖金函数,首次构建了适用于重尾MABs的FTRL型“最佳双世界”(BOBW)算法,无需截断非负性假设,在对抗环境中实现$ ilde{O}(T^{1/eta})$最坏后悔率,在随机环境中达到$ ilde{O}("log T)$依赖于差距的后悔率。随后将框架扩展至线性情形,提出首个针对有限动作集的对抗性重尾线性老虎机算法,其后悔率为$ ilde{O}(d^{1/2}T^{1/eta})$,与已知最优随机环境边界一致。此外,提出一种通用的数据依赖学习率——重尾噪声感知稳定性惩罚匹配(HT-SPM),证明在满足一定条件下可保证一般重尾老虎机问题的BOBW后悔界。结合方差减少的线性损失估计器,首次获得重尾线性老虎机的BOBW结果。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Heavy-tailed bandits have been extensively studied since the seminal work of \citet{Bubeck2012BanditsWH}. In particular, heavy-tailed linear bandits, enabling efficient learning with both a large number of arms and heavy-tailed noises, have recently attracted significant attention \citep{ShaoYKL18,XueWWZ20,ZhongHYW21,Wang2025heavy,tajdini2025improved}. However, prior studies focus almost exclusively on stochastic regimes, with few exceptions limited to the special case of heavy-tailed multi-armed bandits (MABs) \citep{Huang0H22,ChengZ024,Chen2024uniINF}. In this work, we propose a general framework for adversarial heavy-tailed bandit problems, which performs follow-the-regularized-leader (FTRL) over the loss estimates shifted by a bonus function. Via a delicate setup of the bonus function, we devise the first FTRL-type best-of-both-worlds (BOBW) algorithm for heavy-tailed MABs, which does not require the truncated non-negativity assumption and achieves an $\widetilde{O}(T^{\frac{1}{\varepsilon}})$ worst-case regret in the adversarial regime as well as an $\widetilde{O}(\log T)$ gap-dependent regret in the stochastic regime. We then extend our framework to the linear case, proposing the first algorithm for adversarial heavy-tailed linear bandits with finite arm sets. This algorithm achieves an $\widetilde{O}(d^{\frac{1}{2}}T^{\frac{1}{\varepsilon}})$ regret, matching the best-known worst-case regret bound in stochastic regimes. Moreover, we propose a general data-dependent learning rate, termed \textit{heavy-tailed noise aware stability-penalty matching} (HT-SPM). We prove that HT-SPM guarantees BOBW regret bounds for general heavy-tailed bandit problems once certain conditions are satisfied. By using HT-SPM and, in particular, a variance-reduced linear loss estimator, we obtain the first BOBW result for heavy-tailed linear bandits.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。