A Concentration Bound for TD(0) with Function Approximation
Machine Learning
2026-01-13 v4 Systems and Control
Systems and Control
Machine Learning
Abstract
We derive uniform all-time concentration bound of the type 'for all for some ' for TD(0) with linear function approximation. We work with online TD learning with samples from a single sample path of the underlying Markov chain. This makes our analysis significantly different from offline TD learning or TD learning with access to independent samples from the stationary distribution of the Markov chain. We treat TD(0) as a contractive stochastic approximation algorithm, with both martingale and Markov noises. Markov noise is handled using the Poisson equation and the lack of almost sure guarantees on boundedness of iterates is handled using the concept of relaxed concentration inequalities.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2312.10424,
title = {A Concentration Bound for TD(0) with Function Approximation},
author = {Siddharth Chandak and Vivek S. Borkar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.10424},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Published in Stochastic Systems