Title
Counterfactual Risk Minimization: Learning from Logged Bandit Feedback.
Abstract
We develop a learning principle and an efficient algorithm for batch learning from logged bandit feedback. This learning setting is ubiquitous in online systems (e.g., ad placement, web search, recommendation), where an algorithm makes a prediction (e.g., ad ranking) for a given input (e.g., query) and observes bandit feedback (e.g., user clicks on presented ads). We first address the counterfactual nature of the learning problem through propensity scoring. Next, we prove generalization error bounds that account for the variance of the propensity-weighted empirical risk estimator. These constructive bounds give rise to the Counterfactual Risk Minimization (CRM) principle. We show how CRM can be used to derive a new learning method - called Policy Optimizer for Exponential Models (POEM) - for learning stochastic linear rules for structured output prediction. We present a decomposition of the POEM objective that enables efficient stochastic gradient optimization. POEM is evaluated on several multi-label classification problems showing substantially improved robustness and generalization performance compared to the state-of-the-art.
Year
Venue
Field
2015
International Conference on Machine Learning
Ranking,Constructive,Computer science,Empirical risk minimization,Robustness (computer science),Counterfactual thinking,Minification,Artificial intelligence,Generalization error,Machine learning,Estimator
DocType
Volume
Citations 
Journal
abs/1502.02362
38
PageRank 
References 
Authors
1.77
23
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Adith Swaminathan122912.68
Thorsten Joachims2173871254.06