arXiv subjects

Marina Sheshukova

Publications and source records attributed to Marina Sheshukova.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Accelerating Linear Bandits with Persistent Candidate Sets

Exhaustive optimistic scoring can make action selection costly in linear bandits with a large fixed set of $K$ actions, requiring $\mathcal{O}(K)$ score evaluations per round. We introduce Persistent Candidate LinUCB (\textsc{PC-LinUCB}), which maintains $k$ active actions and samples $q$ challengers uniformly from the remaining $K-k$ actions at each round. By scoring only these $k+q$ candidates, \textsc{PC-LinUCB} reduces the number of score evaluations per round to $\mathcal{O}(k+q)$. We establish problem-independent and problem-dependent high-probability regret bounds consisting of a standard linear-bandit learning term and an additive discovery cost of order $\mathcal{O}\left((K-k)\log(K-k)/q\right)$ at fixed confidence. Notably, this additional cost does not grow with the horizon. For fixed gaps and sufficiently long horizons, we establish an $Ω\left((K-k)/q\right)$ regret lower bound under uniform challenger sampling, showing that partial candidate access itself imposes an unavoidable regret cost. Experiments show that \textsc{PC-LinUCB} substantially accelerates LinUCB while maintaining comparable regret, and that the persistent candidate mechanism can extend beyond LinUCB.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Efficient Hypergradient Descent for Inverse Reinforcement Learning

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) aims to recover a reward function under which the resulting policy reproduces the behavior observed in expert demonstrations. A natural approach is to formulate IRL as a bilevel optimization problem, in which the inner level corresponds to policy optimization under the learned reward and the outer level measures the discrepancy between the induced policy and expert data. However, this formulation is computationally challenging in practice because the outer update requires a hypergradient involving an inverse-Hessian-vector product for the inner objective. We address this challenge by showing that, at the inner optimum, the Hessian of the inner objective is proportional to the Fisher information matrix of the policy, yielding a structured Fisher-based hypergradient closely related to Natural Hypergradient Descent. To address the resulting scalability bottleneck associated with large Fisher matrices, we approximate the required inverse-Fisher-vector product using a streaming spectral sketch, avoiding explicit construction of the Fisher matrix. We evaluate our approach against a first-order stochastic bilevel baseline across discrete- and continuous-control environments. The results demonstrate competitive policy performance and strong reward-ranking quality, while Fisher sketching reduces curvature-storage complexity and can improve computational efficiency relative to an explicit Fisher solver.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2026

Gaussian Approximation and Multiplier Bootstrap for Stochastic Gradient Descent

In this paper, we establish the non-asymptotic validity of the multiplier bootstrap procedure for constructing the confidence sets using the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithm. Under appropriate regularity conditions, our approach avoids the need to approximate the limiting covariance of Polyak-Ruppert SGD iterates, which allows us to derive approximation rates in convex distance of order up to $1/\sqrt{n}$. Notably, this rate can be faster than the one that can be proven in the Polyak-Juditsky central limit theorem. To our knowledge, this provides the first fully non-asymptotic bound on the accuracy of bootstrap approximations in SGD algorithms. Our analysis builds on the Gaussian approximation results for nonlinear statistics of independent random variables.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2026

Scalable LinUCB: Low-Rank Design Matrix Updates for Recommenders with Large Action Spaces

In this paper, we introduce PSI-LinUCB, a scalable variant of LinUCB that enables efficient training, inference, and memory usage by representing the inverse regularized design matrix as a sum of a diagonal matrix and low-rank correction. We derive numerically stable rank-1 and batched updates that maintain the inverse without explicitly forming the matrix. To control memory growth, we employ a projector-splitting integrator for dynamical low-rank approximation, yielding an average per-step update cost and memory usage of $O(dr)$ for approximation rank $r$. The inference complexity of the proposed algorithm is $O(dr)$ per action evaluation. Experiments on recommender system datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Rosenthal-type inequalities for linear statistics of Markov chains

In this paper, we establish novel concentration inequalities for additive functionals of geometrically ergodic Markov chains similar to Rosenthal inequalities for sums of independent random variables. We pay special attention to the dependence of our bounds on the mixing time of the corresponding chain. Precisely, we establish explicit bounds that are linked to the constants from the martingale version of the Rosenthal inequality, as well as the constants that characterize the mixing properties of the underlying Markov kernel. Finally, our proof technique is, up to our knowledge, new and is based on a recurrent application of the Poisson decomposition.

math.PR↗

arXiv2025

On the Rate of Gaussian Approximation for Linear Regression Problems

In this paper, we consider the problem of Gaussian approximation for the online linear regression task. We derive the corresponding rates for the setting of a constant learning rate and study the explicit dependence of the convergence rate upon the problem dimension $d$ and quantities related to the design matrix. When the number of iterations $n$ is known in advance, our results yield the rate of normal approximation of order $\sqrt{\log{n}/n}$, provided that the sample size $n$ is large enough.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2025

Nonasymptotic Analysis of Stochastic Gradient Descent with the Richardson-Romberg Extrapolation

We address the problem of solving strongly convex and smooth minimization problems using stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm with a constant step size. Previous works suggested to combine the Polyak-Ruppert averaging procedure with the Richardson-Romberg extrapolation to reduce the asymptotic bias of SGD at the expense of a mild increase of the variance. We significantly extend previous results by providing an expansion of the mean-squared error of the resulting estimator with respect to the number of iterations $n$. We show that the root mean-squared error can be decomposed into the sum of two terms: a leading one of order $\mathcal{O}(n^{-1/2})$ with explicit dependence on a minimax-optimal asymptotic covariance matrix, and a second-order term of order $\mathcal{O}(n^{-3/4})$, where the power $3/4$ is best known. We also extend this result to the higher-order moment bounds. Our analysis relies on the properties of the SGD iterates viewed as a time-homogeneous Markov chain. In particular, we establish that this chain is geometrically ergodic with respect to a suitably defined weighted Wasserstein semimetric.

math.OC↗

arXiv2025

Statistical inference for Linear Stochastic Approximation with Markovian Noise

In this paper we derive non-asymptotic Berry-Esseen bounds for Polyak-Ruppert averaged iterates of the Linear Stochastic Approximation (LSA) algorithm driven by the Markovian noise. Our analysis yields $\mathcal{O}(n^{-1/4})$ convergence rates to the Gaussian limit in the Kolmogorov distance. We further establish the non-asymptotic validity of a multiplier block bootstrap procedure for constructing the confidence intervals, guaranteeing consistent inference under Markovian sampling. Our work provides the first non-asymptotic guarantees on the rate of convergence of bootstrap-based confidence intervals for stochastic approximation with Markov noise. Moreover, we recover the classical rate of order $\mathcal{O}(n^{-1/8})$ up to logarithmic factors for estimating the asymptotic variance of the iterates of the LSA algorithm.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2024

First Order Methods with Markovian Noise: from Acceleration to Variational Inequalities

This paper delves into stochastic optimization problems that involve Markovian noise. We present a unified approach for the theoretical analysis of first-order gradient methods for stochastic optimization and variational inequalities. Our approach covers scenarios for both non-convex and strongly convex minimization problems. To achieve an optimal (linear) dependence on the mixing time of the underlying noise sequence, we use the randomized batching scheme, which is based on the multilevel Monte Carlo method. Moreover, our technique allows us to eliminate the limiting assumptions of previous research on Markov noise, such as the need for a bounded domain and uniformly bounded stochastic gradients. Our extension to variational inequalities under Markovian noise is original. Additionally, we provide lower bounds that match the oracle complexity of our method in the case of strongly convex optimization problems.

math.OC↗