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Given a dataset on actions and resulting long-term rewards, a direct estimation approach fits value functions that minimize prediction error on the training data. Temporal difference learning (TD) methods instead fit value functions by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-15 David Cheikhi , Daniel Russo

In this paper, we consider the policy evaluation problem in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) and derive exact closed-form formulas for the finite-time mean-squared estimation errors of decentralized temporal difference (TD)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-22 Xingang Guo , Bin Hu

Learning the value function of a given policy (target policy) from the data samples obtained from a different policy (behavior policy) is an important problem in Reinforcement Learning (RL). This problem is studied under the setting of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-14 Raghuram Bharadwaj Diddigi , Chandramouli Kamanchi , Shalabh Bhatnagar

In this paper, we provide a unified analysis of temporal difference learning algorithms with linear function approximators by exploiting their connections to Markov jump linear systems (MJLS). We tailor the MJLS theory developed in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-06 Bin Hu , Usman Ahmed Syed

One of the most basic problems in reinforcement learning (RL) is policy evaluation: estimating the long-term return, i.e., value function, corresponding to a given fixed policy. The celebrated Temporal Difference (TD) learning algorithm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Sreejeet Maity , Aritra Mitra

We study the finite-time convergence of TD learning with linear function approximation under Markovian sampling. Existing proofs for this setting either assume a projection step in the algorithm to simplify the analysis, or require a fairly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-27 Aritra Mitra

The goal of this paper is to study a distributed version of the gradient temporal-difference (GTD) learning algorithm for a class of multi-agent Markov decision processes (MDPs). The temporal-difference (TD) learning is a reinforcement…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-04-29 Donghwan Lee , Jianghai Hu

Temporal-Difference (TD) learning is a general and very useful tool for estimating the value function of a given policy, which in turn is required to find good policies. Generally speaking, TD learning updates states whenever they are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Nishanth Anand , Doina Precup

Linear TD($\lambda$) is one of the most fundamental reinforcement learning algorithms for policy evaluation. Previously, convergence rates are typically established under the assumption of linearly independent features, which does not hold…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-15 Zixuan Xie , Xinyu Liu , Rohan Chandra , Shangtong Zhang

We investigate the finite-time convergence properties of Temporal Difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation, a cornerstone algorithm in the field of reinforcement learning. We are interested in the so-called ``robust''…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-26 Wei-Cheng Lee , Francesco Orabona

Temporal difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation (linear TD) is a classic and powerful prediction algorithm in reinforcement learning. While it is well-understood that linear TD converges almost surely to a unique point,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-25 Jiuqi Wang , Shangtong Zhang

We study the convergence behavior of the celebrated temporal-difference (TD) learning algorithm. By looking at the algorithm through the lens of optimization, we first argue that TD can be viewed as an iterative optimization algorithm where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-10 Kavosh Asadi , Shoham Sabach , Yao Liu , Omer Gottesman , Rasool Fakoor

We consider off-policy temporal-difference (TD) learning methods for policy evaluation in Markov decision processes with finite spaces and discounted reward criteria, and we present a collection of convergence results for several…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-03-30 Huizhen Yu

Using insight from numerical approximation of ODEs and the problem formulation and solution methodology of TD learning through a Galerkin relaxation, I propose a new class of TD learning algorithms. After applying the improved numerical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-21 Caleb Bowyer

We investigate the statistical properties of Temporal Difference (TD) learning with Polyak-Ruppert averaging, arguably one of the most widely used algorithms in reinforcement learning, for the task of estimating the parameters of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-25 Weichen Wu , Gen Li , Yuting Wei , Alessandro Rinaldo

We establish novel and general high-dimensional concentration inequalities and Berry-Esseen bounds for vector-valued martingales induced by Markov chains. We apply these results to analyze the performance of the Temporal Difference (TD)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-22 Weichen Wu , Yuting Wei , Alessandro Rinaldo

Relative temporal-difference (TD) learning was introduced to mitigate the slow convergence of TD methods when the discount factor approaches one by subtracting a baseline from the temporal-difference update. While this idea has been studied…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-08 Masoud S. Sakha , Rushikesh Kamalapurkar , Sean Meyn

The average reward is a fundamental performance metric in reinforcement learning (RL) focusing on the long-run performance of an agent. Differential temporal difference (TD) learning algorithms are a major advance for average reward RL as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-19 Ethan Blaser , Jiuqi Wang , Shangtong Zhang

Off-policy reinforcement learning has many applications including: learning from demonstration, learning multiple goal seeking policies in parallel, and representing predictive knowledge. Recently there has been an proliferation of new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-04-01 Adam White , Martha White

Temporal difference learning and Residual Gradient methods are the most widely used temporal difference based learning algorithms; however, it has been shown that none of their objective functions is optimal w.r.t approximating the true…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-04-21 Bo Liu , Daoming Lyu , Wen Dong , Saad Biaz