A Gang of Adversarial Bandits

We consider running multiple instances of multi-armed bandit (MAB) problems in parallel. A main motivation for this study are online recommendation systems, in which each of N users is associated with a MAB problem and the goal is to exploit users' similarity in order to learn users' preferences to K items more efficiently. We consider the adversarial MAB setting, whereby an adversary is free to choose which user and which loss to present to the learner during the learning process. Users are in a social network and the learner is aided by a-priori knowledge of the strengths of the social links between all pairs of users. It is assumed that if the social link between two users is strong then they tend to share the same action. The regret is measured relative to an arbitrary function which maps users to actions. The smoothness of the function is captured by a resistance-based dispersion measure Ψ. We present two learning algorithms, GABA-I and GABA-II which exploit the network structure to bias towards functions of low Ψ values. We show that GABA-I has an expected regret bound of O(pln(N K/Ψ)ΨKT) and per-trial time complexity of O(K ln(N)), whilst GABA-II has a weaker O(pln(N/Ψ) ln(N K/Ψ)ΨKT) regret, but a better O(ln(K) ln(N)) per-trial time complexity. We highlight improvements of both algorithms over running independent standard MABs across users

Judge Barker and the Vengeance of Bloody Bill

In the early pre-statehood history of the Neosho Valley, few events have rivaled that of the death of A.I. Baker. Histories state that his death at the hand of “a gang of pro-slavery bandits” led by the notorious confederate guerilla and Quantrill raide

Dominance and retaliation in the informal structure of authority: a comparative study of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar

In post-independence democratic India several measures have been initiated in order to bring the marginalised and depressed sections of its population into the mainstream of development. While some of these measures have yielded positive results, several others have failed miserably to achieve the desired goals. This has kept the equity issue alive as a hot topic right up to the present day, leading to a great deal of dissatisfaction among the vast majority of India's population. Given the close affinity between caste and class in India, it is not surprising that the bulk of the population who still remain outside the purview of development happen to be the lower castes of the country. The other side of the same coin is the near total manipulation of the instruments of state policy by the higher caste and the elite, thus creating a chasm between the aspirations of different sections of the country’s population. This has resulted in fractured verdicts in electoral politics and in the growth of regionalism, casteism and religious fundamentalism. The growing difference in class character between policymakers and the recipients of various policy measures has not remained unchallenged and at times manifests itself in violence. Continued inequity in the distribution of landed property in areas of intense agricultural activity, particularly in the rural setting, exacerbates the intensity of such conflicts. The age of liberalisation has introduced a new complexity into the whole picture. The presence of a state, which in several areas never did penetrate very far in the pre-liberalisation phase and thus left the population to fend for itself and seek sources of authority in the informal sector, finds its reach even more constricted in the new setting, with most of its energy and resources being devoured by the ever growing sector of the urban middle class. While the dominant section in the rural setting relies on the age-old instruments of hegemony in the informal arena to perpetuate its authority, the instruments of retaliation forged by the depressed and the subaltern section of the population have now acquired a history of infamy in the legal discourse of the state. This paper focuses on such instruments of hegemony and retaliation in the informal arena of authority in the two Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, and in particular seeks to trace how capable, or incapacitated, are the lower echelons of society in coping with these new situations

A Terror to the People: The Evolution of an Outlaw Gang in the Lower Midwest

The details of the heretofore unexamined Reeves Gang may serve as an important case study of violence and lawlessness in the Lower Midwest in the decades following the Civil War. Unlike the “social bandits” such as the Jesse James and Dalton Gangs of the Middle Border region, most outlaw gangs made little attempt to get along with locals. These groups ruled by fear and typically fell afoul of vigilante hangings and shootings— a one-act play, if you will. The Reeves Gang, the focus of this study, would come to be atypical, their tale turning into a three-act play, moving from petty crime to more sophisticated criminal activities, and then to an attempted life of normalcy. Though now long forgotten, several instances of the Reeves Gang’s violent activities, as well as their eventual capture, were to be found in newspapers across the nation at the time

Marion most bold : feminine transgression in the greenwood

In my project, I focus on the role and depiction of women found in the Robin Hood greenwood: specifically, those of Maid Marian. Maid Marian rarely appears in early Robin Hood texts, and especially not in a capacity in which she herself speaks, so it is striking that today she has become almost as synonymous with the greenwood in Robin Hood tales as the man himself. Indeed, one of the rare instances in which Marian plays a lead role occurs in the seventeenth-century ballad “Robin Hood and Maid Marian,” which appears in only one manuscript, after the original Robin Hood ballads of the Middle Ages, and does not seem to have been popular. This seventeenth-century ballad allots Maid Marian an agency typically reserved only for Robin’s merry men. Though I agree that Marian exhibits certain transgressive behaviors, especially in “Robin Hood and Maid Marian,” by the end of Robin Hood texts—medieval, early modern, or otherwise—though the space of the greenwood allows a certain level of freedom for the men in the texts, the “good” women in the Robin Hood texts remain noble ladies who still act as they ought to even though they live outside the confines of civilized society. The same social rules of urban society continue to apply to them, and even in the few cases where the women get to demonstrate more traditionally masculine qualities, they still must end up back in their proper role at the end of the Robin Hood ballad or play.Englis