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It is well known that options can make planning more efficient, among their many benefits. Thus far, algorithms for autonomously discovering a set of useful options were heuristic. Naturally, a principled way of finding a set of useful…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-02-01 Roy Fox , Michal Moshkovitz , Naftali Tishby

Markov decision processes (MDPs) is viewed as an optimization of an objective function over certain linear operators over general function spaces. A new existence result is established for the existence of optimal policies in general MDPs,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Abhishek Gupta , Aditya Mahajan

In this paper we consider the problem of computing an $\epsilon$-optimal policy of a discounted Markov Decision Process (DMDP) provided we can only access its transition function through a generative sampling model that given any…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-06-07 Aaron Sidford , Mengdi Wang , Xian Wu , Lin F. Yang , Yinyu Ye

Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) provide an efficient way to model real-world sequential decision making processes. Motivated by the problem of maintenance and inspection of a group of infrastructure components with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-08-15 Manav Vora , Pranay Thangeda , Michael N. Grussing , Melkior Ornik

This note provides upper bounds on the number of operations required to compute by value iterations a nearly optimal policy for an infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision process with a finite number of states and actions. For a given…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-01-29 Eugene A. Feinberg , Gaojin He

Classical reinforcement learning (RL) aims to optimize the expected cumulative rewards. In this work, we consider the RL setting where the goal is to optimize the quantile of the cumulative rewards. We parameterize the policy controlling…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-17 Jinyang Jiang , Jiaqiao Hu , Yijie Peng

The paper provides an overview of the theory and applications of risk-sensitive Markov decision processes. The term 'risk-sensitive' refers here to the use of the Optimized Certainty Equivalent as a means to measure expectation and risk.…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2025-09-23 Nicole Bäuerle , Anna Jaśkiewicz

The study of Markov models is central to control theory and machine learning. A quantum analogue of partially observable Markov decision process was studied in (Barry, Barry, and Aaronson, Phys. Rev. A, 90, 2014). It was proved that…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-11-06 Christino Tamon , Weichen Xie

In this paper, we consider risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces and unbounded cost under both finite and infinite planning horizons. Our optimality criterion is based on the recursive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-16 Nicole Bäuerle , Alexander Glauner

We investigate the problem of best policy identification in discounted linear Markov Decision Processes in the fixed confidence setting under a generative model. We first derive an instance-specific lower bound on the expected number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-12 Jerome Taupin , Yassir Jedra , Alexandre Proutiere

We study the offline data-driven sequential decision making problem in the framework of Markov decision process (MDP). In order to enhance the generalizability and adaptivity of the learned policy, we propose to evaluate each policy by a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-11-11 Zhengling Qi , Peng Liao

What are the functionals of the reward that can be computed and optimized exactly in Markov Decision Processes?In the finite-horizon, undiscounted setting, Dynamic Programming (DP) can only handle these operations efficiently for certain…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-20 Alexandre Marthe , Aurélien Garivier , Claire Vernade

Partially observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are a standard model for agents making decisions in uncertain environments. Most work on POMDPs focuses on synthesizing strategies based on the available capabilities. However, system…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-07-12 Alyzia-Maria Konsta , Alberto Lluch Lafuente , Christoph Matheja

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Navdeep Kumar , Yashaswini Murthy , Itai Shufaro , Kfir Y. Levy , R. Srikant , Shie Mannor

We consider the batch (off-line) policy learning problem in the infinite horizon Markov Decision Process. Motivated by mobile health applications, we focus on learning a policy that maximizes the long-term average reward. We propose a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-09-20 Peng Liao , Zhengling Qi , Runzhe Wan , Predrag Klasnja , Susan Murphy

We consider a piecewise deterministic Markov decision process, where the expected exponential utility of total (nonnegative) cost is to be minimized. The cost rate, transition rate and post-jump distributions are under control. The state…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-11-22 Xin Guo , Yi Zhang

This paper considers the problem of finding a solution to the finite horizon constrained Markov decision processes (CMDP) where the objective as well as constraints are sum of additive and multiplicative utilities. Towards solving this, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-03-16 Uday Kumar M , Sanjay P Bhat , Veeraruna Kavitha , Nandyala Hemachandra

Motivated by wide-ranging applications such as video delivery over networks using Multiple Description Codes, congestion control, and inventory management, we study the state-tracking of a Markovian random process with a known transition…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2017-03-06 Parisa Mansourifard , Tara Javidi , Bhaskar Krishnamachari

An important question in the field of AI is the extent to which successful behaviour requires an internal representation of the world. In this work, we quantify the amount of information an optimal policy provides about the underlying…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-16 Alfred Harwood , Jose Faustino , Alex Altair

We consider a discrete-time Markov decision process with Borel state and action spaces. The performance criterion is to maximize a total expected {utility determined by unbounded return function. It is shown the existence of optimal…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-10-08 François Dufour , Alexandre Genadot