Two-Action Apple Tasting with Switching Costs (arxiv.org)
arXiv:2606.03851v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study the two-action apple-tasting problem with switching costs against an oblivious adversary. In an equivalent normalized formulation, at each round the learner chooses between a revealing action and a blind action: the revealing action gives reward $0$ and reveals the hidden value $x_t\in[-1,1]$ of the blind action; the blind action gives reward $x_t$ but reveals nothing. The learner pays one unit whenever they switches actions, and regret is measured against the best fixed action in hindsight.
General feedback-graph algorithms with switching costs give $\widetilde O(T^{2/3})$ regret guarantees for this problem. The two-action apple-tasting graph was the natural candidate for the missing $\Omega(T^{2/3})$ obstruction in the switching-cost classification: such a lower bound would have transferred to a large family of still-unclassified feedback graphs. We prove that this obstruction is not there: the oblivious minimax expected regret for this problem satisfies \[
\frac{1}{2\sqrt3}\cdot\sqrt T
\le
R_T^\star
\le
2\sqrt{3}\cdot \sqrt{T}. \]
Abstract: We study the two-action apple-tasting problem with switching costs against an oblivious adversary. In an equivalent normalized formulation, at each round the learner chooses between a revealing action and a blind action: the revealing action gives reward $0$ and reveals the hidden value $x_t\in[-1,1]$ of the blind action; the blind action gives reward $x_t$ but reveals nothing. The learner pays one unit whenever they switches actions, and regret is measured against the best fixed action in hindsight.
General feedback-graph algorithms with switching costs give $\widetilde O(T^{2/3})$ regret guarantees for this problem. The two-action apple-tasting graph was the natural candidate for the missing $\Omega(T^{2/3})$ obstruction in the switching-cost classification: such a lower bound would have transferred to a large family of still-unclassified feedback graphs. We prove that this obstruction is not there: the oblivious minimax expected regret for this problem satisfies \[
\frac{1}{2\sqrt3}\cdot\sqrt T
\le
R_T^\star
\le
2\sqrt{3}\cdot \sqrt{T}. \]
Comments