We investigate the piecewise-stationary combinatorial semi-bandit problem. Compared to the original combinatorial semi-bandit problem, our setting assumes the reward distributions of base arms may change in a piecewise-stationary manner at unknown time steps. We propose an algorithm, GLR-CUCB, which incorporates an efficient combinatorial semi-bandit algorithm, CUCB, with an almost parameter-free change-point detector, the Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT). Our analysis shows that the regret of GLR-CUCB is upper bounded by O(√NKT log T), where N is the number of piecewise-stationary segments, K is the number of base arms, and T is the number of time steps. As a complement, we also derive a nearly matching regret lower bound on the order of Ω(√NKT), for both piecewise-stationary multi-armed bandits and combinatorial semi-bandits, using information-theoretic techniques and judiciously constructed piecewise-stationary bandit instances. Our lower bound is tighter than the best available regret lower bound, which is Ω(√T). Numerical experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of GLR-CUCB compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms.

We investigate the piecewise-stationary combinatorial semi-bandit problem. Compared to the original combinatorial semi-bandit problem, our setting assumes the reward distributions of base arms may change in a piecewise-stationary manner at unknown time steps. We propose an algorithm, GLR-CUCB, which incorporates an efficient combinatorial semi-bandit algorithm, CUCB, with an almost parameter-free change-point detector, the Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT). Our analysis shows that the regret of GLR-CUCB is upper bounded by O( √ N KT log T ), where N is the number of piecewise-stationary segments, K is the number of base arms, and T is the number of time steps. As a complement, we also derive a nearly matching regret lower bound on the order of Ω( √ N KT ), for both piecewise-stationary multi-armed bandits and combinatorial semi-bandits, using information-theoretic techniques and judiciously constructed piecewisestationary bandit instances. Our lower bound is tighter than the best available regret lower bound, which is Ω( √ T ). Numerical experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of GLR-CUCB compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms.

No abstract

Cascading bandit (CB) is a popular model for web search and online advertising. However, the stationary CB model may be too simple to cope with real-world problems, where user preferences may change over time. Considering piecewisestationary environments, two efficient algorithms, GLRT-Ca-scadeUCB and GLRT-CascadeKL-UCB, are developed. Comparing with existing works, the proposed algorithms: i) are free of change-point-dependent information for choosing parameters; ii) have fewer tuning parameters; iii) improve regret upper bounds. We also show that the proposed algorithms are optimal up to logarithm terms by deriving a minimax lower bound Ω( √ N LT ) for piecewise-stationary CB. The efficiency of the proposed algorithms is validated through numerical tests on a real-world benchmark dataset.

No abstract