We consider the off-policy evaluation (OPE) problem in contextual bandits, where the goal is to estimate the value of a target policy using the data collected by a logging policy. Most popular approaches to the OPE are variants of the doubly robust (DR) estimator obtained by combining a direct method (DM) estimator and a correction term involving the inverse propensity score (IPS). Existing algorithms primarily focus on strategies to reduce the variance of the DR estimator arising from large IPS. We propose a new approach called the Doubly Robust with Information borrowing and Context-based switching (DR-IC) estimator that focuses on reducing both bias and variance. The DR-IC estimator replaces the standard DM estimator with a parametric reward model that borrows information from the 'closer' contexts through a correlation structure that depends on the IPS. The DR-IC estimator also adaptively interpolates between this modified DM estimator and a modified DR estimator based on a context-specific switching rule. We give provable guarantees on the performance of the DR-IC estimator. We also demonstrate the superior performance of the DR-IC estimator compared to the state-of-the-art OPE algorithms on a number of benchmark problems.

We consider a seller offering a large network of $N$ products over a time horizon of $T$ periods. The seller does not know the parameters of the products' linear demand model, and can dynamically adjust product prices to learn the demand model based on sales observations. The seller aims to minimize its pseudo-regret, i.e., the expected revenue loss relative to a clairvoyant who knows the underlying demand model. We consider a sparse set of demand relationships between products to characterize various connectivity properties of the product network. In particular, we study three different sparsity frameworks: (1) $L_0$ sparsity, which constrains the number of connections in the network, and (2) off-diagonal sparsity, which constrains the magnitude of cross-product price sensitivities, and (3) a new notion of spectral sparsity, which constrains the asymptotic decay of a similarity metric on network nodes. We propose a dynamic pricing-and-learning policy that combines the optimism-in-the-face-of-uncertainty and PAC-Bayesian approaches, and show that this policy achieves asymptotically optimal performance in terms of $N$ and $T$. We also show that in the case of spectral and off-diagonal sparsity, the seller can have a pseudo-regret linear in $N$, even when the network is dense.

This paper investigates the effectiveness of an expert system based on K-nearest neighbours algorithm for laser speckle image sampling applied to the early detection of diabetes. With the latest developments in artificial intelligent guided laser speckle imaging technologies, it may be possible to optimise laser parameters, such as wavelength, energy level and image texture measures in association with a suitable AI technique to interact effectively with the subcellular properties of a skin tissue to detect early signs of diabetes. The new approach is potentially more effective than the classical skin glucose level observation because of its optimised combination of laser physics and AI techniques, and additionally, it allows non-expert individuals to perform more frequent skin tissue tests for an early detection of diabetes. Keywords: diabetes, automated diagnosis, laser-speckle image, skin subcellular properties, image analysis.

We present a new neighbor sampling method on temporal graphs. In a temporal graph, predicting different nodes' time-varying properties can require the receptive neighborhood of various temporal scales. In this work, we propose the TNS (Time-aware Neighbor Sampling) method: TNS learns from temporal information to provide an adaptive receptive neighborhood for every node at any time. Learning how to sample neighbors is non-trivial, since the neighbor indices in time order are discrete and not differentiable. To address this challenge, we transform neighbor indices from discrete values to continuous ones by interpolating the neighbors' messages. TNS can be flexibly incorporated into popular temporal graph networks to improve their effectiveness without increasing their time complexity. TNS can be trained in an end-to-end manner. It needs no extra supervision and is automatically and implicitly guided to sample the neighbors that are most beneficial for prediction. Empirical results on multiple standard datasets show that TNS yields significant gains on edge prediction and node classification.

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has been widely studied in the portfolio management task. However, it is challenging to understand a DRL-based trading strategy because of the black-box nature of deep neural networks. In this paper, we propose an empirical approach to explain the strategies of DRL agents for the portfolio management task. First, we use a linear model in hindsight as the reference model, which finds the best portfolio weights by assuming knowing actual stock returns in foresight. In particular, we use the coefficients of a linear model in hindsight as the reference feature weights. Secondly, for DRL agents, we use integrated gradients to define the feature weights, which are the coefficients between reward and features under a linear regression model. Thirdly, we study the prediction power in two cases, single-step prediction and multi-step prediction. In particular, we quantify the prediction power by calculating the linear correlations between the feature weights of a DRL agent and the reference feature weights, and similarly for machine learning methods. Finally, we evaluate a portfolio management task on Dow Jones 30 constituent stocks during 01/01/2009 to 09/01/2021. Our approach empirically reveals that a DRL agent exhibits a stronger multi-step prediction power than machine learning methods.

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Learn how to build Machine Learning projects in this TensorFlow Course created by The Click Reader. In this course, you will be learning about Scalar as well as Tensors and how to create them using TensorFlow. You will also be learning how to perform various kinds of Tensor operations for manipulating and changing tensor values.

In this post, we'll cover a pragmatic logistic regression classifier to mimic a trend following strategy for the S&P 500 ETF, SPY. The pipeline takes in daily prices for SPY along with several SPDR sector ETFs and macro ETFs for gold, Yen, Swiss Franc etc. Once all Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume data has been received from yfinance, a feature space (the set of columns if thinking in a spreadsheets world) is built using select indicators included in TA-lib. The features are then reduced to 4 n-components with Principal Component Analysis; the model is trained on these n principal components, using ground truth labels generated by a brute force optimized dual moving average crossover. Initially, I opted to use the default boundary of .5 for the binary classification. On visual inspection, there is a gap in this logic -- as the classifier appears exceedingly optimistic (subjective).

XGBoost stands for "Extreme Gradient Boosting". It is a decision tree-based algorithm which is used in Machine Learning. XGBoost makes use of the gradient boosting framework. Decision Trees are structures that consists of a set of leaf nodes, branches as well as internal nodes. Each leaf node represents a Class Label. The internal node represents the attributes while the branches connect the leaves to these internal nodes.