Related papers: Optimal Regret Bounds for Selecting the State Repr…
We study the problem of infinite-horizon average-reward reinforcement learning with linear Markov decision processes (MDPs). The associated Bellman operator of the problem not being a contraction makes the algorithm design challenging.…
Stochastic shortest path (SSP) is a well-known problem in planning and control, in which an agent has to reach a goal state in minimum total expected cost. In the learning formulation of the problem, the agent is unaware of the environment…
In this paper, we propose and study opportunistic reinforcement learning - a new variant of reinforcement learning problems where the regret of selecting a suboptimal action varies under an external environmental condition known as the…
The optimized certainty equivalent (OCE) is a family of risk measures that cover important examples such as entropic risk, conditional value-at-risk and mean-variance models. In this paper, we propose a new episodic risk-sensitive…
Learning a near optimal policy in a partially observable system remains an elusive challenge in contemporary reinforcement learning. In this work, we consider episodic reinforcement learning in a reward-mixing Markov decision process (MDP).…
We tackle the problem of acting in an unknown finite and discrete Markov Decision Process (MDP) for which the expected shortest path from any state to any other state is bounded by a finite number $D$. An MDP consists of $S$ states and $A$…
We study minimax optimal reinforcement learning in episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs), which are MDPs with conditionally independent transition components. Assuming the factorization is known, we propose two model-based…
We investigate online convex optimization in non-stationary environments and choose the dynamic regret as the performance measure, defined as the difference between cumulative loss incurred by the online algorithm and that of any feasible…
In this paper, we present a learning algorithm that achieves asymptotically optimal regret for Markov decision processes in average reward under a communicating assumption. That is, given a communicating Markov decision process $M$, our…
We present the first finite time global convergence analysis of policy gradient in the context of infinite horizon average reward Markov decision processes (MDPs). Specifically, we focus on ergodic tabular MDPs with finite state and action…
Online reinforcement learning (RL) has been widely applied in information processing scenarios, which usually exhibit much uncertainty due to the intrinsic randomness of channels and service demands. In this paper, we consider an…
In several realistic situations, an interactive learning agent can practice and refine its strategy before going on to be evaluated. For instance, consider a student preparing for a series of tests. She would typically take a few practice…
This paper studies an online learning problem that seeks optimal testing policies for a stream of subjects, each of whom can be evaluated through a sequence of candidate tests drawn from a common pool. We refer to this problem as the Online…
We investigate the hardness of online reinforcement learning in fixed horizon, sparse linear Markov decision process (MDP), with a special focus on the high-dimensional regime where the ambient dimension is larger than the number of…
We study the problem of \emph{dynamic regret minimization} in $K$-armed Dueling Bandits under non-stationary or time varying preferences. This is an online learning setup where the agent chooses a pair of items at each round and observes…
We study online finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes with adversarially changing loss and aggregate bandit feedback (a.k.a full-bandit). Under this type of feedback, the agent observes only the total loss incurred over the entire…
We study non-rectangular robust Markov decision processes under the average-reward criterion, where the ambiguity set couples transition probabilities across states and the adversary commits to a stationary kernel for the entire horizon. We…
This paper proposes a computationally tractable algorithm for learning infinite-horizon average-reward linear Markov decision processes (MDPs) and linear mixture MDPs under the Bellman optimality condition. While guaranteeing computational…
In this paper, we study the contextual multinomial logit (MNL) bandit problem in which a learning agent sequentially selects an assortment based on contextual information, and user feedback follows an MNL choice model. There has been a…
Online learning algorithms that minimize regret provide strong guarantees in situations that involve repeatedly making decisions in an uncertain environment, e.g. a driver deciding what route to drive to work every day. While regret…