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This is a Quantitative Study study.

September 23, 2025Open Access

PAC Off-Policy Prediction of Contextual Bandits

Key Points

The novel algorithm achieves improved coverage of prediction intervals in off-policy evaluation settings, enhancing usability in safety-critical contexts.
Empirical evaluation indicates that the proposed method outperforms existing techniques, particularly in constructing PAC-valid prediction intervals.
Analyses reveal both finite-sample and asymptotic properties of the approach, suggesting robust application for complex decision-making tasks.
The research provides theoretical guarantees on coverage, addressing challenges in accurately quantifying target policy performance.

Abstract

This paper investigates off-policy evaluation in contextual bandits, aiming to quantify the performance of a target policy using data collected under a different and potentially unknown behavior policy. Recently, methods based on conformal prediction have been developed to construct reliable prediction intervals that guarantee marginal coverage in finite samples, making them particularly suited for safety-critical applications. To further achieve coverage conditional on a given offline data set, we propose a novel algorithm that constructs probably approximately correct prediction intervals. Our method builds upon a PAC-valid conformal prediction framework, and we strengthen its theoretical guarantees by establishing PAC-type bounds on coverage. We analyze both finite-sample and asymptotic properties of the proposed method, and compare its empirical performance with existing methods in simulations.

PAC Off-Policy Prediction of Contextual Bandits

Key Points

Abstract

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