2020/10/23 by Kaito Ariu, Ariu, Kaito, Narae Ryu +5
Computer Science · Decision Sciences · #Advanced Bandit Algorithms Research #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Retrieval (cs.IR) #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Machine Learning (stat.ML) #Recommender Systems and Techniques #Stochastic Gradient Optimization Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2010.12363
openalex publication_date 2020/10/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper proposes a theoretical analysis of recommendation systems in an online setting, where items are sequentially recommended to users over time. In each round, a user, randomly picked from a population of m users, requests a recommendation. The decision-maker observes the user and selects an item from a catalogue of n items. Importantly, an item cannot be recommended twice to the same user. The probabilities that a user likes each item are unknown. The performance of the recommendation algorithm is captured through its regret, considering as a reference an Oracle algorithm aware of these probabilities. We investigate various structural assumptions on these probabilities: we derive for each structure regret lower bounds, and devise algorithms achieving these limits. Interestingly, our analysis reveals the relative weights of the different components of regret: the component due to the constraint of not presenting the same item twice to the same user, that due to learning the chances users like items, and finally that arising when learning the underlying structure.