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Related papers: Minimax Regret Bounds for Reinforcement Learning

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We study online learning in \emph{constrained MDPs} (CMDPs), focusing on the goal of attaining sublinear strong regret and strong cumulative constraint violation. Differently from their standard (weak) counterparts, these metrics do not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Francesco Emanuele Stradi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning in episodic Markov decision processes with unknown transition kernels, where the goal is to optimize the total reward under the risk measure of exponential utility. We propose two provably…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Yingjie Fei , Zhuoran Yang , Yudong Chen , Zhaoran Wang , Qiaomin Xie

We present regret minimization algorithms for the contextual multi-armed bandit (CMAB) problem over $K$ actions in the presence of delayed feedback, a scenario where loss observations arrive with delays chosen by an adversary. As a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-13 Orin Levy , Liad Erez , Alon Cohen , Yishay Mansour

We study the regret of reinforcement learning from offline data generated by a fixed behavior policy in an infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision process (MDP). While existing analyses of common approaches, such as fitted $Q$-iteration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-13 Yichun Hu , Nathan Kallus , Masatoshi Uehara

Understanding how to efficiently learn while adhering to safety constraints is essential for using online reinforcement learning in practical applications. However, proving rigorous regret bounds for safety-constrained reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-04-29 Benjamin Schiffer , Lucas Janson

We investigate an infinite-horizon average reward Markov Decision Process (MDP) with delayed, composite, and partially anonymous reward feedback. The delay and compositeness of rewards mean that rewards generated as a result of taking an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-29 Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

Computational results demonstrate that posterior sampling for reinforcement learning (PSRL) dramatically outperforms algorithms driven by optimism, such as UCRL2. We provide insight into the extent of this performance boost and the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-06-14 Ian Osband , Benjamin Van Roy

This paper is devoted to the extension of the regret lower bound beyond ergodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the problem dependent setting. While the regret lower bound for ergodic MDPs is well-known and reached by tractable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-23 Victor Boone , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

Online reinforcement learning in non-episodic, finite-horizon MDPs remains underexplored and is challenged by the need to estimate returns to a fixed terminal time. Existing infinite-horizon methods, which often rely on discounted…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Jiamin Xu , Kyra Gan

We provide algorithms that guarantee regret $R_T(u)\le \tilde O(G\|u\|^3 + G(\|u\|+1)\sqrt{T})$ or $R_T(u)\le \tilde O(G\|u\|^3T^{1/3} + GT^{1/3}+ G\|u\|\sqrt{T})$ for online convex optimization with $G$-Lipschitz losses for any comparison…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-02-26 Ashok Cutkosky

Switching costs, which capture the costs for changing policies, are regarded as a critical metric in reinforcement learning (RL), in addition to the standard metric of losses (or rewards). However, existing studies on switching costs (with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-10 Ming Shi , Yingbin Liang , Ness Shroff

A recent goal in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework is to choose a sequence of actions or a policy to maximize the reward collected or minimize the regret incurred in a finite time horizon. For several RL problems in operation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-18 K J Prabuchandran , Tejas Bodas , Theja Tulabandhula

In some reinforcement learning problems an agent may be provided with a set of input policies, perhaps learned from prior experience or provided by advisors. We present a reinforcement learning with policy advice (RLPA) algorithm which…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-07-19 Mohammad Gheshlaghi Azar , Alessandro Lazaric , Emma Brunskill

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-09 Wenhao Xu , Xuefeng Gao , Xuedong He

We consider the adversarial online multi-task reinforcement learning setting, where in each of $K$ episodes the learner is given an unknown task taken from a finite set of $M$ unknown finite-horizon MDP models. The learner's objective is to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-12 Quan Nguyen , Nishant A. Mehta

This paper presents new \emph{variance-aware} confidence sets for linear bandits and linear mixture Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). With the new confidence sets, we obtain the follow regret bounds: For linear bandits, we obtain an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-01 Zihan Zhang , Jiaqi Yang , Xiangyang Ji , Simon S. Du

This paper investigates the potential of quantum acceleration in addressing infinite horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) to enhance average reward outcomes. We introduce an innovative quantum framework for the agent's engagement with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-28 Bhargav Ganguly , Yang Xu , Vaneet Aggarwal

We study the problem of incentive-compatible online learning with bandit feedback. In this class of problems, the experts are self-interested agents who might misrepresent their preferences with the goal of being selected most often. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-13 Julian Zimmert , Teodor V. Marinov

We provide an algorithm that achieves the optimal regret rate in an unknown weakly communicating Markov Decision Process (MDP). The algorithm proceeds in episodes where, in each episode, it picks a policy using regularization based on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-05-14 Peter L. Bartlett , Ambuj Tewari

In this paper, we revisit the regret of undiscounted reinforcement learning in MDPs with a birth and death structure. Specifically, we consider a controlled queue with impatient jobs and the main objective is to optimize a trade-off between…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-22 Jonatha Anselmi , Bruno Gaujal , Louis-Sébastien Rebuffi