A Best-of-Both-Worlds Algorithm for Bandits with Delayed Feedback

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 (NeurIPS 2022) Main Conference Track

Bibtex Paper Supplemental

Authors

Saeed Masoudian, Julian Zimmert, Yevgeny Seldin

Abstract

We present a modified tuning of the algorithm of Zimmert and Seldin [2020] for adversarial multiarmed bandits with delayed feedback, which in addition to the minimax optimal adversarial regret guarantee shown by Zimmert and Seldin [2020] simultaneously achieves a near-optimal regret guarantee in the stochastic setting with fixed delays. Specifically, the adversarial regret guarantee is $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{TK} + \sqrt{dT\log K})$, where $T$ is the time horizon, $K$ is the number of arms, and $d$ is the fixed delay, whereas the stochastic regret guarantee is $\mathcal{O}\left(\sum_{i \neq i^*}(\frac{1}{\Delta_i} \log(T) + \frac{d}{\Delta_{i}}) + d K^{1/3}\log K\right)$, where $\Delta_i$ are the suboptimality gaps. We also present an extension of the algorithm to the case of arbitrary delays, which is based on an oracle knowledge of the maximal delay $d_{max}$ and achieves $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{TK} + \sqrt{D\log K} + d_{max}K^{1/3} \log K)$ regret in the adversarial regime, where $D$ is the total delay, and $\mathcal{O}\left(\sum_{i \neq i^*}(\frac{1}{\Delta_i} \log(T) + \frac{\sigma_{max}}{\Delta_{i}}) + d_{max}K^{1/3}\log K\right)$ regret in the stochastic regime, where $\sigma_{max}$ is the maximal number of outstanding observations. Finally, we present a lower bound that matches regret upper bound achieved by the skipping technique of Zimmert and Seldin [2020] in the adversarial setting.