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Related papers: Minimax Regret Bounds for Reinforcement Learning

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We study model-based reinforcement learning in an unknown finite communicating Markov decision process. We propose a simple algorithm that leverages a variance based confidence interval. We show that the proposed algorithm, UCRL-V, achieves…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-12 Aristide Tossou , Debabrota Basu , Christos Dimitrakakis

We present a new algorithm based on posterior sampling for learning in constrained Markov decision processes (CMDP) in the infinite-horizon undiscounted setting. The algorithm achieves near-optimal regret bounds while being advantageous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-28 Danil Provodin , Pratik Gajane , Mykola Pechenizkiy , Maurits Kaptein

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) replaces hard-to-specify rewards with pairwise trajectory preferences, yet regret-oriented theory often assumes that preference labels are generated consistently from a single ground-truth…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Ming Shi , Yingbin Liang , Ness B. Shroff , Ananthram Swami

We study the challenging exploration incentive problem in both bandit and reinforcement learning, where the rewards are scale-free and potentially unbounded, driven by real-world scenarios and differing from existing work. Past works in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Mengfan Xu , Diego Klabjan

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-25 Woojin Chae , Dabeen Lee

While numerous works have focused on devising efficient algorithms for reinforcement learning (RL) with uniformly bounded rewards, it remains an open question whether sample or time-efficient algorithms for RL with large state-action space…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-08 Jiayi Huang , Han Zhong , Liwei Wang , Lin F. Yang

In this paper, we study reinforcement learning in Markov Decision Processes with Probabilistic Reward Machines (PRMs), a form of non-Markovian reward commonly found in robotics tasks. We design an algorithm for PRMs that achieves a regret…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-08-21 Xiaofeng Lin , Xuezhou Zhang

In online learning problems, exploiting low variance plays an important role in obtaining tight performance guarantees yet is challenging because variances are often not known a priori. Recently, considerable progress has been made by Zhang…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-07 Yeoneung Kim , Insoon Yang , Kwang-Sung Jun

We provide improved gap-dependent regret bounds for reinforcement learning in finite episodic Markov decision processes. Compared to prior work, our bounds depend on alternative definitions of gaps. These definitions are based on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Christoph Dann , Teodor V. Marinov , Mehryar Mohri , Julian Zimmert

We study reinforcement learning for episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) whose transitions are modelled by a multinomial logistic (MNL) model. Existing algorithms for MNL mixture MDPs yield a regret of $\smash{\tilde{O}(dH^2\sqrt{T})}$…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Pierre Boudart , Pierre Gaillard , Alessandro Rudi

We study online reinforcement learning for finite-horizon deterministic control systems with {\it arbitrary} state and action spaces. Suppose that the transition dynamics and reward function is unknown, but the state and action space is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-07 Lin F. Yang , Chengzhuo Ni , Mengdi Wang

The problem of reinforcement learning in an unknown and discrete Markov Decision Process (MDP) under the average-reward criterion is considered, when the learner interacts with the system in a single stream of observations, starting from an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-06 Mohammad Sadegh Talebi , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

We study reinforcement learning with linear function approximation where the transition probability and reward functions are linear with respect to a feature mapping $\boldsymbol{\phi}(s,a)$. Specifically, we consider the episodic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-31 Pihe Hu , Yu Chen , Longbo Huang

We consider learning in an adversarial Markov Decision Process (MDP) where the loss functions can change arbitrarily over $K$ episodes and the state space can be arbitrarily large. We assume that the Q-function of any policy is linear in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-05 Yan Dai , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Julian Zimmert

We study stochastic linear bandits with heavy-tailed rewards, where the rewards have a finite $(1+\epsilon)$-absolute central moment bounded by $\upsilon$ for some $\epsilon \in (0,1]$. We improve both upper and lower bounds on the minimax…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-28 Artin Tajdini , Jonathan Scarlett , Kevin Jamieson

We consider the exploration-exploitation dilemma in finite-horizon reinforcement learning (RL). When the state space is large or continuous, traditional tabular approaches are unfeasible and some form of function approximation is mandatory.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-11 Andrea Zanette , David Brandfonbrener , Emma Brunskill , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric

We study the model-based undiscounted reinforcement learning for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). The oracle we consider is the optimal policy of the POMDP with a known environment in terms of the average reward over…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Yi Xiong , Ningyuan Chen , Xuefeng Gao , Xiang Zhou

We study algorithms for online linear optimization in Hilbert spaces, focusing on the case where the player is unconstrained. We develop a novel characterization of a large class of minimax algorithms, recovering, and even improving,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-05-22 H. Brendan McMahan , Francesco Orabona

This paper studies regret minimization with randomized value functions in reinforcement learning. In tabular finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes, we introduce a clipping variant of one classical Thompson Sampling (TS)-like algorithm,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-10 Priyank Agrawal , Jinglin Chen , Nan Jiang

We address the issue of safety in reinforcement learning. We pose the problem in an episodic framework of a constrained Markov decision process. Existing results have shown that it is possible to achieve a reward regret of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-26 Tao Liu , Ruida Zhou , Dileep Kalathil , P. R. Kumar , Chao Tian