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arXiv · 2505.13012

Asymptotic Performance of Time-Varying Bayesian Optimization

Anthony Bardou·Patrick Thiran
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Abstract

Time-Varying Bayesian Optimization (TVBO) is the go-to framework for optimizing a time-varying black-box objective function that may be noisy and expensive to evaluate, but its excellent empirical performance remains to be understood theoretically. Is it possible for the instantaneous regret of a TVBO algorithm to vanish asymptotically, and if so, when? We answer this question of great importance by providing upper bounds and algorithm-independent lower bounds for the cumulative regret of TVBO algorithms. In doing so, we provide important insights about the TVBO framework and derive sufficient conditions for a TVBO algorithm to have the no-regret property. To the best of our knowledge, our analysis is the first to cover all major classes of stationary kernel functions used in practice.

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BibTeXRIS

Anthony Bardou, Patrick Thiran. 2025-05-19. Asymptotic Performance of Time-Varying Bayesian Optimization. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.13012

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