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Self-Normalized Inference for Constant-Stepsize Temporal-Difference Learning under Markovian Sampling

Machine Learning 2026-08-11 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

Constant-stepsize temporal-difference (TD) learning is attractive for policy evaluation, but inference from a single Markov trajectory must account for serial dependence and a stepsize-dependent stationary target. For fixed-stepsize linear TD, we establish a functional central limit theorem whose covariance retains the multiplicative component induced by the random TD matrix and the stationary iterate error. We then derive a joint functional limit for parallel Richardson--Romberg (RR) recursions driven by the same trajectory. A Brownian-bridge self-normalizer yields asymptotically pivotal confidence regions for prespecified state-value contrasts without estimating the long-run covariance or selecting a bandwidth or batch length. For such a contrast, the procedure admits a one-pass implementation whose memory does not grow with the trajectory length. At a fixed stepsize, the inferential center is the RR stationary target. We also study horizon-indexed designs in which the stepsize remains constant within each run and decreases across longer horizons. Under an explicit RR-dependent rate window, the residual RR target shift, multiplicative remainder, and initialization effect are negligible at the root-nn scale, yielding inference for the projected Bellman solution. Experiments on FrozenLake and Garnet illustrate stationary-target coverage, RR target correction, and the finite-sample behavior of the horizon-indexed design.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.10896,
  title  = {Self-Normalized Inference for Constant-Stepsize Temporal-Difference Learning under Markovian Sampling},
  author = {Min Zeng and Yichen Zhang and Xiaofeng Shao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.10896},
  year   = {2026}
}