English

On the Performance of Temporal Difference Learning With Neural Networks

Machine Learning 2023-12-12 v1

Abstract

Neural Temporal Difference (TD) Learning is an approximate temporal difference method for policy evaluation that uses a neural network for function approximation. Analysis of Neural TD Learning has proven to be challenging. In this paper we provide a convergence analysis of Neural TD Learning with a projection onto B(θ0,ω)B(\theta_0, \omega), a ball of fixed radius ω\omega around the initial point θ0\theta_0. We show an approximation bound of O(ϵ)+O~(1/m)O(\epsilon) + \tilde{O} (1/\sqrt{m}) where ϵ\epsilon is the approximation quality of the best neural network in B(θ0,ω)B(\theta_0, \omega) and mm is the width of all hidden layers in the network.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2312.05397,
  title  = {On the Performance of Temporal Difference Learning With Neural Networks},
  author = {Haoxing Tian and Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis and Alex Olshevsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.05397},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T13:45:37.638Z