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We introduce a generalization of temporal-difference (TD) learning to networks of interrelated predictions. Rather than relating a single prediction to itself at a later time, as in conventional TD methods, a TD network relates each…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-04-22 Richard S. Sutton , Brian Tanner

First order optimization algorithms play a major role in large scale machine learning. A new class of methods, called adaptive algorithms, were recently introduced to adjust iteratively the learning rate for each coordinate. Despite great…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-01 André Belotto da Silva , Maxime Gazeau

We consider the problem of continuous-time policy evaluation. This consists in learning through observations the value function associated with an uncontrolled continuous-time stochastic dynamic and a reward function. We propose two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-08 Ziad Kobeissi , Francis Bach

We study the convergence dynamics of Gradient Descent (GD) in a minimal binary classification setting, consisting of a two-neuron ReLU network and two training instances. We prove that even under these strong simplifying assumptions, while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Guy Smorodinsky , Sveta Gimpleson , Itay Safran

The analysis of Temporal Difference (TD) learning in the average-reward setting faces notable theoretical difficulties because the Bellman operator is not contractive with respect to any norm. This complicates standard analyses of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Haoxing Tian , Zaiwei Chen , Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis , Alex Olshevsky

Distributional reinforcement learning (DRL) has achieved empirical success in various domains. One core task in DRL is distributional policy evaluation, which involves estimating the return distribution $\eta^\pi$ for a given policy $\pi$.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-17 Yang Peng , Liangyu Zhang , Zhihua Zhang

Provably sample-efficient Reinforcement Learning (RL) with rich observations and function approximation has witnessed tremendous recent progress, particularly when the underlying function approximators are linear. In this linear regime,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-09 Alekh Agarwal , Tong Zhang

Temporal-difference and Q-learning play a key role in deep reinforcement learning, where they are empowered by expressive nonlinear function approximators such as neural networks. At the core of their empirical successes is the learned…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Yufeng Zhang , Qi Cai , Zhuoran Yang , Yongxin Chen , Zhaoran Wang

There is a long history of using meta learning as representation learning, specifically for determining the relevance of inputs. In this paper, we examine an instance of meta-learning in which feature relevance is learned by adapting step…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-11 Alex Kearney , Vivek Veeriah , Jaden Travnik , Patrick M. Pilarski , Richard S. Sutton

Deep neural networks' remarkable ability to correctly fit training data when optimized by gradient-based algorithms is yet to be fully understood. Recent theoretical results explain the convergence for ReLU networks that are wider than…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-09 Asaf Noy , Yi Xu , Yonathan Aflalo , Lihi Zelnik-Manor , Rong Jin

This paper analyzes multi-step TD-learning algorithms within the `deadly triad' scenario, characterized by linear function approximation, off-policy learning, and bootstrapping. In particular, we prove that n-step TD-learning algorithms…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-04-09 Donghwan Lee

The paper briefy reviews several recent results on hierarchical architectures for learning from examples, that may formally explain the conditions under which Deep Convolutional Neural Networks perform much better in function approximation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-12 Hrushikesh Mhaskar , Tomaso Poggio

Temporal-difference learning with gradient correction (TDC) is a two time-scale algorithm for policy evaluation in reinforcement learning. This algorithm was initially proposed with linear function approximation, and was later extended to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-29 Yue Wang , Shaofeng Zou , Yi Zhou

This paper is concerned with the problem of policy evaluation with linear function approximation in discounted infinite horizon Markov decision processes. We investigate the sample complexities required to guarantee a predefined estimation…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-03 Gen Li , Weichen Wu , Yuejie Chi , Cong Ma , Alessandro Rinaldo , Yuting Wei

Deep neural networks have emerged as powerful tools for learning operators defined over infinite-dimensional function spaces. However, existing theories frequently encounter difficulties related to dimensionality and limited…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Jianfei Li , Shuo Huang , Han Feng , Ding-Xuan Zhou , Gitta Kutyniok

In deep learning, dense layer connectivity has become a key design principle in deep neural networks (DNNs), enabling efficient information flow and strong performance across a range of applications. In this work, we model densely connected…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-03 Jinshu Huang , Haibin Su , Xue-Cheng Tai , Chunlin Wu

Gradient-based temporal difference (GTD) algorithms are widely used in off-policy learning scenarios. Among them, the two time-scale TD with gradient correction (TDC) algorithm has been shown to have superior performance. In contrast to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-27 Tengyu Xu , Shaofeng Zou , Yingbin Liang

Temporal difference (TD) learning is a cornerstone reinforcement learning (RL) method for policy evaluation, where the goal is to estimate the value function of a Markov decision process under a fixed policy. While a substantial body of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Donghwan Lee , Do Wan Kim

Nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) are powerful tools for modeling real-world dynamical systems. However, propagating initial state uncertainty through nonlinear dynamics, especially when the ODE is unknown and learned from…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-06 Peter Amorese , Morteza Lahijanian

We consider emphatic temporal-difference learning algorithms for policy evaluation in discounted Markov decision processes with finite spaces. Such algorithms were recently proposed by Sutton, Mahmood, and White (2015) as an improved…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-12-29 Huizhen Yu