Learning in Short-Time Horizons with Measurable Costs Learning in Short-Time Horizons with Measurable Costs

by Mullen, Patrick Bowen

Dynamic pricing is a difficult problem for machine learning. The environment is noisy, dynamic and has a measurable cost associated with exploration that necessitates that learning be done in short-time horizons. These short-time horizons force the learning algorithms to make pricing decisions based on scarce data.

In this work, various machine learning algorithms are compared in the context of dynamic pricing. These algorithms include the Kalman filter, artificial neural networks, particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithms. The majority of these algorithms have been modified to handle the pricing problem. The results show that these adaptations allow the learning algorithms to handle the noisy dynamic conditions and to learn quickly.