Let p be an odd prime and S a finite p-group. B. Oliver’s conjecture arises from an open problem in the theory of p-local finite groups. It is the claim that a certain characteristic subgroup X(S) of S always contains the Thompson subgroup. In previous work the first two authors and M. Lilienthal recast Oliver’s conjecture as a statement about the representation theory of the factor group S/X(S...

Thompson Sampling (TS) has surged a lot of interest due to its good empirical performance, in particular in the computational advertising. Though successful, the tools for its performance analysis appeared only recently. In this paper, we describe and analyze SpectralTS algorithm for a bandit problem, where the payoffs of the choices are smooth given an underlying graph. In this setting, each c...

We derive an alternative proof for the regret of Thompson sampling (TS) in the stochastic linear bandit setting. While we obtain a regret bound of order e O(d3/2 p T ) as in previous results, the proof sheds new light on the functioning of the TS. We leverage on the structure of the problem to show how the regret is related to the sensitivity (i.e., the gradient) of the objective function and h...

Three groups F ⊆ T ⊆ V , known as Thompson groups, have generated interest since R. J. Thompson introduced them in the late 1960s. Part of their initial interest was the fact that T and V supplied the first known examples of infinite, simple, finitely presented groups. Since then, other properties of the groups have been studied as well as their interaction with other areas of mathematics. The ...

283 Neural correlates of perceptual decisions have been identified in the visual cortex of monkeys observing weak or ambiguous stimuli1–4. Implicit in such studies is a behavioral report about a sensory event that allows an inference about the subject’s perceptual state. To examine the link between sensation and action, we have used a signal-detection protocol to investigate visual signals in a...

Inverse sampling design is generally considered to be appropriate technique when the population is divided into two subpopulations, one of which contains only few units. In this paper, we derive the Horvitz-Thompson estimator for the population mean under inverse sampling designs, where subpopulation sizes are known. We then introduce an alternative unbiased estimator, corresponding to post-st...