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You're reading from  Mastering Reinforcement Learning with Python

Product typeBook
Published inDec 2020
Reading LevelBeginner
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781838644147
Edition1st Edition
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Enes Bilgin
Enes Bilgin
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Enes Bilgin

Enes Bilgin works as a senior AI engineer and a tech lead in Microsoft's Autonomous Systems division. He is a machine learning and operations research practitioner and researcher with experience in building production systems and models for top tech companies using Python, TensorFlow, and Ray/RLlib. He holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in systems engineering from Boston University and a B.S. in industrial engineering from Bilkent University. In the past, he has worked as a research scientist at Amazon and as an operations research scientist at AMD. He also held adjunct faculty positions at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and at the Ingram School of Engineering at Texas State University.
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Going beyond bandits for personalization

When we covered multi-armed and contextual bandit problems in the early chapters of the book, we presented a case study that aimed maximizing the click-through rate (CTR) of online ads. This is just one example of how bandit models can be used to provide users with personalized content and experience, a common challenge of almost all online (and offline) content providers, from e-retailers to social media platforms. In this section, we go beyond the bandit models and describe a multi-step reinforcement learning approach to personalization. Let's first start with discussing where the bandit models fall short, and then how multi-step RL can address those issues.

Shortcomings of bandit models

The goal in bandit problems is to maximize the immediate (single step) return. In an online ad CTR maximization problem, this is usually a good way of thinking about the goal: An ad is displayed, the user has clicked, and voila! If not, it&apos...

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Mastering Reinforcement Learning with Python
Published in: Dec 2020Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781838644147

Author (1)

author image
Enes Bilgin

Enes Bilgin works as a senior AI engineer and a tech lead in Microsoft's Autonomous Systems division. He is a machine learning and operations research practitioner and researcher with experience in building production systems and models for top tech companies using Python, TensorFlow, and Ray/RLlib. He holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in systems engineering from Boston University and a B.S. in industrial engineering from Bilkent University. In the past, he has worked as a research scientist at Amazon and as an operations research scientist at AMD. He also held adjunct faculty positions at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and at the Ingram School of Engineering at Texas State University.
Read more about Enes Bilgin