Optimistic planning for the stochastic knapsack problem
File(s)pike-burke17a.pdf (443.75 KB)
Published version
Author(s)
Pike-Burke, Ciara
Grunewalder, Steffen
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
The stochastic knapsack problem is a stochastic resource allocation problem that arises frequently and yet is exceptionally hard to solve. We derive and study an optimistic planning algorithm specifically designed for the stochastic knapsack problem. Unlike other optimistic planning algorithms for MDPs, our algorithm, OpStoK, avoids the use of discounting and is adaptive to the amount of resources available. We achieve this behavior by means of a concentration inequality that simultaneously applies to capacity and reward estimates. Crucially, we are able to guarantee that the aforementioned confidence regions hold collectively over all time steps by an application of Doob’s inequality. We demonstrate that the method returns an ε-optimal solution to the stochastic knapsack problem with high probability. To the best of our knowledge, our algorithm is the first which provides such guarantees for the stochastic knapsack problem. Furthermore, our algorithm is an anytime algorithm and will return a good solution even if stopped prematurely. This is particularly important given the difficulty of the problem. We also provide theoretical conditions to guarantee OpStoK does not expand all policies and demonstrate favorable performance in a simple experimental setting.
Editor(s)
Singh, A
Zhu, J
Date Issued
2017-04-21
Date Acceptance
2017-04-01
Citation
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND STATISTICS, VOL 54, 2017, 54, pp.1114-1122
ISSN
2640-3498
Publisher
MICROTOME PUBLISHING
Start Page
1114
End Page
1122
Journal / Book Title
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND STATISTICS, VOL 54
Volume
54
Copyright Statement
© The authors and PMLR 2020. MLResearchPress. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
License URL
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000509368500119&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Source
20th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS)
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Physical Sciences
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Statistics & Probability
Computer Science
Mathematics
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2017-04-20
Finish Date
2017-04-22
Coverage Spatial
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Date Publish Online
2017-04-20