partial monitoring
Analysis and Design of Thompson Sampling for Stochastic Partial Monitoring
We investigate finite stochastic partial monitoring, which is a general model for sequential learning with limited feedback. While Thompson sampling is one of the most promising algorithms on a variety of online decision-making problems, its properties for stochastic partial monitoring have not been theoretically investigated, and the existing algorithm relies on a heuristic approximation of the posterior distribution. To mitigate these problems, we present a novel Thompson-sampling-based algorithm, which enables us to exactly sample the target parameter from the posterior distribution. Besides, we prove that the new algorithm achieves the logarithmic problem-dependent expected pseudo-regret $\mathsf{O}(\log T)$ for a linearized variant of the problem with local observability. This result is the first regret bound of Thompson sampling for partial monitoring, which also becomes the first logarithmic regret bound of Thompson sampling for linear bandits.
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First provide a summary of the paper, and then address the following criteria: Quality, clarity, originality and significance. The authors give an algorithm for easy partial-monitoring games, ones that satisfy the local observability condition of Bartok et al. Their algorithm BPM attains the O(\sqrt{T}) rate which is minimax optimal for such games. Originality and Significance: There are already algorithms that attain O(\sqrt{T}) regret for easy partial monitoring games. Indeed, the authors compare themselves against the CBP algorithm of Bartok et al.