Goto

Collaborating Authors

 Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur


A single algorithm for both restless and rested rotting bandits

arXiv.org Machine Learning

In many application domains (e.g., recommender systems, intelligent tutoring systems), the rewards associated to the actions tend to decrease over time. This decay is either caused by the actions executed in the past (e.g., a user may get bored when songs of the same genre are recommended over and over) or by an external factor (e.g., content becomes outdated). These two situations can be modeled as specific instances of the rested and restless bandit settings, where arms are rotting (i.e., their value decrease over time). These problems were thought to be significantly different, since Levine et al. (2017) showed that state-of-the-art algorithms for restless bandit perform poorly in the rested rotting setting. In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm, Rotting Adaptive Window UCB (RAW-UCB), that achieves near-optimal regret in both rotting rested and restless bandit, without any prior knowledge of the setting (rested or restless) and the type of non-stationarity (e.g., piece-wise constant, bounded variation). This is in striking contrast with previous negative results showing that no algorithm can achieve similar results as soon as rewards are allowed to increase. We confirm our theoretical findings on a number of synthetic and dataset-based experiments.


Trustworthy Feature Importance Avoids Unrestricted Permutations

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Since their introduction by Breiman (2001), permutation-based feature importance measures have been widely adopted. However, randomly permuting the entries of a dataset may create new points far from the original data or even "impossible data." In a permuted dataset, we may find children who are retired or individuals who graduated from high school before they were born (Mase et al. 2022, p. 1). Forcing ML models to make predictions at these points causes them to extrapolate, making explanations unreliable (Hooker et al. 2021). Every non-trivial permutation-based variable importance measure, including SHAP (Lundberg and Lee 2017), Knockoffs (Barber and Candés 2015), conditional model reliance (Fisher et al. 2019), and accumulated local effect (ALE) plots (Apley and Zhu 2020) suffer from this. We propose and compare three new strategies to address extrapolation issues. The first combines conditional model reliance from Fisher et al. (2019) with a Gaussian transformation. By mapping data quantiles to a Gaussian distribution and back, we adjust only the quantiles of point values, significantly reducing extrapolation. Under a Gaussian copula assumption for the feature distribution, we prove that the new data points follow the same probability distribution as the original data.


Inside the UFO hotel in Wales - with 'spacecraft' door, NASA-designed interiors and Doctor Who TARDIS bathroom

Daily Mail - Science & tech

The world's most family-friendly landmarks revealed - with six UK spots making the top 50 The UK's best staycations revealed by Daily Mail Travel - from a Gara Rock beach proposal to an £80-a-night mansion retreat This sun-drenched European coast offers great value - and it's just a two-hour flight away Don't get caught out by Ryanair's small bag restrictions - I've tested the carry-on suitcases and underseat bags that beat the strict requirements Why heading to Salcombe, one of Britain's most expensive seaside towns, in the shoulder season is an off-peak treat - and what to do there Tired of fun! Middle class families who turn their noses up at Butlin's are missing out Luxury hotel owner in Cornwall offers to foot British tourists' petrol bills to ease financial pain of staycation With flights disrupted amid Iran war, these are Europe's easiest countries to navigate by train - and how it compares to flying for price and time How to retire to the seaside for as little as £90,000 - and Britain's best hidden beach home spots New business class seats with IMAX-style wrap-around screens revealed - making passengers feel like they're in the cinema How the cost of your staycation REALLY compares with a'cheap' holiday abroad - when you factor in everything from food to fuel Why the Lake District shouldn't introduce tourism tax, says Cumbria tourism boss How Marseille became Europe's Capital of Cool - with 20 degree sunshine, sea views and amazing seafood The world's best food markets revealed - and a UK spot comes in second place READ MORE: The best hotels in the UK for 2026 revealed - does YOUR favourite make the list? Ready to hit the mute button on reality? Deep in the Pembrokeshire countryside lies a cosmic retreat that feels almost light years away from Earth. The awe-inspiring Spodnic UFO is one of three standout stays at Melin Mabes, a four-acre glamping site owned and ran by Martin Johnson and his wife, CarolAnne. 'It looks like it's just landed from outer space and aliens could come out,' Martin notes as he showcases his brainchild during the first episode of Channel's World's Most Secret Hotels.


Predictive Uncertainty in Short-Term PV Forecasting under Missing Data: A Multiple Imputation Approach

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Missing values are common in photovoltaic (PV) power data, yet the uncertainty they induce is not propagated into predictive distributions. We develop a framework that incorporates missing-data uncertainty into short-term PV forecasting by combining stochastic multiple imputation with Rubin's rule. The approach is model-agnostic and can be integrated with standard machine-learning predictors. Empirical results show that ignoring missing-data uncertainty leads to overly narrow prediction intervals. Accounting for this uncertainty improves interval calibration while maintaining comparable point prediction accuracy. These results demonstrate the importance of propagating imputation uncertainty in data-driven PV forecasting.


The Mediterranean is overdue a TSUNAMI: Scientists warn there's a 100% chance an enormous wave will hit the French Riviera in the next 30 years - as they call for urgent evacuation drills

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Timothee Chalamet, Oscars laughing stock: All the brutal digs aimed at star after he missed out on Best Actor and'looked like he wanted to cry' A-list stars ditch formal Oscars red carpet dresses for sexy party looks - with Jeff Goldblum's wife Emilie Livingston, Heidi Klum, Amelia Gray Hamlin and Kate Hudson turning up the heat at Vanity Fair bash Teyana Taylor erupts backstage at Oscars after being'shoved' Chilling new details of dismembered Emily Pike's final hours after she was snatched in Arizona desert and man detectives now believe murdered her Dark truth about secret new filler treatment that uses tissue from DEAD PEOPLE... as doctors issue urgent warning Awful Timothee Chalamet's ego is bigger than Kylie's inflated butt... but it's so clear what's really going on here. Israel blows up Ayatollah Khamenei's personal jet amid claims his injured heir Mojtaba'has been flown to Moscow for treatment' Kate lets Diana take the spotlight: Princess skips Mother's Day post after emotional cancer message and Photoshop furore Baseball fans fume after'terrible' umpire error ends USA's controversial showdown with Dominican Republic in WBC semifinal How Oscars 2026 proved Hollywood has overdosed on Ozempic: Leading doctors name stars now at'extreme' risk... and reveal terrifying new side effects Trump warns of'very bad future' for Nato if his call for warships to police Strait of Hormuz is refused - hinting he could punish Ukraine Kim Kardashian struggles to WALK in skintight golden gown and towering'stripper heels' as she attends the Vanity Fair Oscars party Oscars presenter Kumail Nanjiani blasted for horrific Holocaust joke: 'Do not invite him back' Real reason Sean Penn skipped Oscars 2026... as disappointed fans blast his boycott'It's like he was possessed': Terrifying moment Alexander brother turned into a'monster' and raped me... and the four chilling words he said after horror attack - alleged victim claims Dubai'arrests foreign survivors of Iranian drone strike after they sent images of explosion aftermath to loved ones to prove they were safe' The Mediterranean is overdue a TSUNAMI: Scientists warn there's a 100% chance an enormous wave will hit the French Riviera in the next 30 years - as they call for urgent evacuation drills The French Riviera is famed for its sunny, year-round climate, azure waters and luxury resorts - but it'll be hit by a tsunami in the next 30 years, scientists predict. Experts say there is a '100 per cent' chance a great wave will form in the Mediterranean Sea in the next few decades. The tsunami could hit France's southern coastline in as little as 10 minutes from the trigger, causing chaos for tens of thousands of people who flock there during the summer months. While the country does have a national tsunami alert system, this only covers waves caused by distant earthquakes .





Joint distribution optimal transportation for domain adaptation

Neural Information Processing Systems

However, the generating process can be different in several aspects, such as the conditions and devices used for acquisition, different pre-processing, different compressions, etc. Domain adaptation


High-probabilitycomplexityguaranteesfornonconvex minimaxproblems

Neural Information Processing Systems

To this end, high-probability guarantees have been considered in the literature [35, 64, 20, 32, 22]. These results allow to control the risk associated with the worst-case tail events as theyspecify howmanyiterations would be sufficient toensureG(xk,yk) issufficiently small foranygivenfailure probability q (0,1).