Multidimensional Binary Search for Contextual Decision-Making
Ilan Lobel, Renato Paes Leme, Adrian Vladu
Operations Research · 2018 · Volume 66 · Issue 5
Abstract
We consider a multidimensional search problem that is motivated by questions in contextual decision making, such as dynamic pricing and personalized medicine. Nature selects a state from a d -dimensional unit ball and then generates a sequence of d -dimensional directions. We are given access to the directions but not access to the state. After receiving a direction, we have to guess the value of the dot product between the state and the direction. Our goal is to minimize the number of times when our guess is more than ϵ away from the true answer. We construct a polynomial time algorithm that we call projected volume achieving regret O ( d log( d / ϵ )), which is optimal up to a log d factor. The algorithm combines a volume cutting strategy with a new geometric technique that we call cylindrification.
Keywords
online decision making, online algorithms, contextual pricing
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