Policy Gradient Optimization of Thompson Sampling Policies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a policy gradient approach to optimize Thompson sampling policies, enabling automatic correction of known shortcomings and improvements in long horizon bandit problems.

Contribution

It presents a novel application of policy gradient methods to optimize Thompson sampling policies, including specialized estimators for Bayesian bandit problems.

Findings

Policy gradient optimization improves Thompson sampling performance.

The approach corrects known algorithm shortcomings.

Significant gains in long horizon problems.

Abstract

We study the use of policy gradient algorithms to optimize over a class of generalized Thompson sampling policies. Our central insight is to view the posterior parameter sampled by Thompson sampling as a kind of pseudo-action. Policy gradient methods can then be tractably applied to search over a class of sampling policies, which determine a probability distribution over pseudo-actions (i.e., sampled parameters) as a function of observed data. We also propose and compare policy gradient estimators that are specialized to Bayesian bandit problems. Numerical experiments demonstrate that direct policy search on top of Thompson sampling automatically corrects for some of the algorithm's known shortcomings and offers meaningful improvements even in long horizon problems where standard Thompson sampling is extremely effective.