AdaSwitch: An Adaptive Switching Meta-Algorithm for Learning-Augmented Bounded-Influence Problems
Authors: Xi Chen, Yuze Chen, Shibo Dai, Yuan Zhou
Organizations: Yau Mathematical Sciences Center & Department of Mathematical Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China, Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, Beijing 101408, China
We study history-dependent online problems with a possibly inaccurate prediction of the future request sequence. Motivated by several real-world applications, we introduce a \emph{bounded-influence} framework in which past decisions and requests affect the future optimal value by only a bounded amount. Within this framework, we develop AdaSwitch, a meta-algorithm that adaptively switches between suitable offline and online oracles. AdaSwitch provides explicit guarantees on expected performance that tighten as prediction error decreases or the offline optimum increases. With perfect predictions, its guarantee approaches the offline oracle's guarantee as the offline optimum grows. It also retains a worst-case guarantee close to that of the online oracle under arbitrary predictions. Applications to online lead-time quotation, k-server and caching, and online reusable resource allocation demonstrate the framework's applicability to both reward maximization and cost minimization.
Figures & tables
Figure 1 : Information flow and mode transitions in AdaSwitch.
Algorithm 1 AdaSwitch with an Exact Offline Oracle
Val(PI(q),eq:r(q),aq:r)≥γOpt(PI(q),eq:r(q)).
Algorithm 2 AdaSwitch with a γ -Approximate Offline Oracle
Policy
Perfect-prediction guarantee at robustness r
Arbitrary-prediction guarantee
Q-FRACwP
β(r)
r
AdaSwitch-OLTQ
max{r,1−(η−r)Optpred10ℓ2}
max{r,1−(η−r)Optrealℓ(10ℓ+7ηφM∗)}
Here η=defηOLTQ , Optpred=defOpt(OLTQ,e1:∞∗) , Optreal=defOpt(OLTQ,e1:∞) , and, because clipping is inactive, φM∗=∑t=1M∣et−et∗∣ . The AdaSwitch entries are instance-dependent.
Table 2 : Q-FRACwP ( Huo and Cheung 2026 ) and AdaSwitch-OLTQ for sequences with a common known arrival horizon.
Figure 2 : Perfect-prediction OLTQwP performance as the guaranteed robustness target r for AdaSwitch-OLTQ and Q-FRACwP varies. Higher ratios are better.
Figure 3 : Perfect-prediction CAwP performance as AdaSwitch-CA’s guaranteed robustness upper bound varies for k=10 . The comparator policies are independent of ϵ . Lower ratios are better.
Figure 4 : CAwP performance as the effective horizon increases. Lower ratios are better.
Online time-series forecasters receive labels only after horizon-dependent delays, while every adaptation step spends limited compute. We study when an online learner should update, not how to adapt at every opportunity, and introduce ADOWIP: a residual-adapter framework with sealed delay queues, exact budget accounting, and auditable update telemetry. Its main scheduler is an observed decision-loss priority gate that updates only after feedback is revealed, when downstream loss, optionally penalized by prediction MSE, exceeds a calibrated empirical quantile and budget remains. We prove hard-budget feasibility, projected-OGD regret for a convex linear accepted-update subproblem, and stability plus conditional finite-sample gate-selection statements. On public ETT capacity-planning tasks, a frozen calibration/evaluation split selects a gate that lowers held-out decision loss against always, fixed-period, and drift-triggered exact-update baselines under matched compute. Secondary threshold/load-index ETT suites are mixed: 33 of 41 selected contrasts clear the stricter cross-artifact Holm family, and the 8 nonpassing rows are explicitly excluded from primary claims. The same protocol improves an external UCI Bike capacity proxy with 20/0 held-out wins, and a fixed gate passes three full-year Capital Bikeshare station-rebalancing contrasts. Probe-based and finance experiments remain negative, delimiting the current scope of decision-prioritized adaptation.
We study linear bandits under exact sliding-window constraints, where every consecutive block of actions must belong to a prescribed feasible set. In the offline setting, where the reward function is known, we show that convexity and cyclic-shift invariance make a stationary solution optimal when w∣T and within an additive O(w) gap otherwise. In the online setting, we show that geometric structure alone is insufficient for learning, and sublinear regret can be impossible. We introduce a transition diameter τ that quantifies feasible reachability and develop a rare-switching OFUL algorithm with regret O(dT+τd+w) against the offline-optimal feasible trajectory. Finally, we remove cyclic invariance and consider general sliding-window constraints, where optimal behavior may be non-stationary. We represent recent action history as the state of a finite-memory control problem and introduce a history-state diameter D that measures feasible communication between viable histories. Combining optimistic remaining-horizon planning with rare policy updates, we obtain a regret bound of O(dT+dD+w). We evaluate our approach on real-world and synthetic benchmarks, showing that it maintains exact feasibility while achieving reward and regret comparable to baselines with substantially fewer policy updates.
Seyed Mohammad Hadi Hosseini, Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori, Sattar Vakili
We introduce a new budgeted framework for online influence maximization, considering the total cost of an advertising campaign instead of the common cardinality constraint on a chosen influencer set. Our approach better models the real-world setting where the cost of influencers varies and advertisers want to find the best value for their overall social advertising budget. We propose an algorithm assuming an independent cascade diffusion model and edge level semi-bandit feedback, and provide both theoretical and experimental results. Our analysis is also valid for the cardinality constraint setting and improves the state of the art regret bound in this case.
Pierre Perrault, Jennifer Healey, Zheng Wen +1
Adobe Research, San Jose, CA · ENS Paris-Saclay · DeepMind +1