Related papers: Mean-Payoff Optimization in Continuous-Time Markov…
Long-run average optimization problems for Markov decision processes (MDPs) require constructing policies with optimal steady-state behavior, i.e., optimal limit frequency of visits to the states. However, such policies may suffer from…
Marked Temporal Point Process (MTPP) has been well studied to model the event distribution in marked event streams, which can be used to predict the mark and arrival time of the next event. However, existing studies overlook that the…
Markov chains are the de facto finite-state model for stochastic dynamical systems, and Markov decision processes (MDPs) extend Markov chains by incorporating non-deterministic behaviors. Given an MDP and rewards on states, a classical…
We consider synchronizing properties of Markov decision processes (MDP), viewed as generators of sequences of probability distributions over states. A probability distribution is p-synchronizing if the probability mass is at least p in some…
This note describes sufficient conditions under which total-cost and average-cost Markov decision processes (MDPs) with general state and action spaces, and with weakly continuous transition probabilities, can be reduced to discounted MDPs.…
A new approach to the steady state detection in the uniformization method of solving continuous time Markov chains is introduced. The method is particularly useful in solving inhomogenous CTMC's in multiple steps, where the desired error…
Parameter management is essential for distributed training of large machine learning (ML) tasks. Some ML tasks are hard to distribute because common approaches to parameter management can be highly inefficient. Advanced parameter management…
We present in this paper a novel non-parametric approach useful for clustering Markov processes. We introduce a pre-processing step consisting in mapping multivariate independent and identically distributed samples from random variables to…
In this paper, we study the problem of estimating a Markov chain $X$(signal) from its noisy partial information $Y$, when the transition probability kernel depends on some unknown parameters. Our goal is to compute the conditional…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (or minimize…
We consider a change-point detection problem for a simple class of Piecewise Deterministic Markov Processes (PDMPs). A continuous-time PDMP is observed in discrete time and through noise, and the aim is to propose a numerical method to…
Aiming at solving large-scale learning problems, this paper studies distributed optimization methods based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). By formulating the learning problem as a consensus problem, the ADMM can…
We describe a probabilistic framework for synthesizing control policies for general multi-robot systems, given environment and sensor models and a cost function. Decentralized, partially observable Markov decision processes (Dec-POMDPs) are…
This paper addresses distributed parameter estimation in stochastic dynamic systems with quantized measurements, constrained by quantized communication and Markovian switching directed topologies. To enable accurate recovery of the original…
Parametric Markov chains (pMCs) are Markov chains (MCs) with symbolic probabilities. A pMC encodes a family of MCs, where each member is obtained by replacing parameters with constants. The parameters allow encoding dependencies between…
Monte Carlo methods -- such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and piecewise deterministic Markov process (PDMP) samplers -- provide asymptotically exact estimators of expectations under a target distribution. There is growing interest in…
The long-run average payoff per transition (mean payoff) is the main tool for specifying the performance and dependability properties of discrete systems. The problem of constructing a controller (strategy) simultaneously optimizing several…
Bond rating Transition Probability Matrices (TPMs) are built over a one-year time-frame and for many practical purposes, like the assessment of risk in portfolios or the computation of banking Capital Requirements (e.g. the new IFRS 9…
We study infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the decision maker evaluates each of her strategies by aggregating the infinite stream of expected stage-rewards. The crucial feature of our approach is that the aggregation…
We present a Markov-chain analysis of blockwise-stochastic algorithms for solving partially block-separable optimization problems. Our main contributions to the extensive literature on these methods are statements about the Markov operators…