Related papers: Variance-reduced $Q$-learning is minimax optimal
A central issue lying at the heart of online reinforcement learning (RL) is data efficiency. While a number of recent works achieved asymptotically minimal regret in online RL, the optimality of these results is only guaranteed in a…
The $Q$-learning algorithm is a simple and widely-used stochastic approximation scheme for reinforcement learning, but the basic protocol can exhibit instability in conjunction with function approximation. Such instability can be observed…
In this paper, we study a mean-variance optimization problem in an infinite horizon discrete time discounted Markov decision process (MDP). The objective is to minimize the variance of system rewards with the constraint of mean performance.…
Despite many applications, dimensionality reduction in the $\ell_1$-norm is much less understood than in the Euclidean norm. We give two new oblivious dimensionality reduction techniques for the $\ell_1$-norm which improve exponentially…
Stochastic optimal control usually requires an explicit dynamical model with probability distributions, which are difficult to obtain in practice. In this work, we consider the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem of unknown linear…
Value function based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, for example, $Q$-learning, learn optimal policies from datasets of actions, rewards, and state transitions. However, when the underlying state transition dynamics are stochastic…
We propose an algorithmic framework, that employs active subspace techniques, for scalable global optimization of functions with low effective dimension (also referred to as low-rank functions). This proposal replaces the original…
We study the sample complexity of obtaining an $\epsilon$-optimal policy in \emph{Robust} discounted Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs), given only access to a generative model of the nominal kernel. This problem is widely studied in the…
One of the key approaches to save samples in reinforcement learning (RL) is to use knowledge from an approximate model such as its simulator. However, how much does an approximate model help to learn a near-optimal policy of the true…
Reinforcement learning (RL) post-training is crucial for LLM alignment and reasoning, but existing policy-based methods, such as PPO and DPO, can fall short of fixing shortcuts inherited from pre-training. In this work, we introduce…
In the past few years, off-policy reinforcement learning methods have shown promising results in their application for robot control. Deep Q-learning, however, still suffers from poor data-efficiency and is susceptible to stochasticity in…
In this study, we derive Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) bounds on the asymptotic sample-complexity for RL within the infinite-horizon Markov Decision Process (MDP) setting that are sharper than those in existing literature. The…
We propose a quantum algorithm for `extremal learning', which is the process of finding the input to a hidden function that extremizes the function output, without having direct access to the hidden function, given only partial input-output…
Gradient descent method, as one of the major methods in numerical optimization, is the key ingredient in many machine learning algorithms. As one of the most fundamental way to solve the optimization problems, it promises the function value…
Validating whether a quantum device confers a computational advantage often requires classical simulation of its outcomes. The worst-case sampling cost of $L_1$-norm based simulation has plateaued at $\le(2+\sqrt{2})\xi_t \delta^{-1}$ in…
We study variance-dependent regret bounds for Markov decision processes (MDPs). Algorithms with variance-dependent regret guarantees can automatically exploit environments with low variance (e.g., enjoying constant regret on deterministic…
Quantum annealing is a new method for finding extrema of multidimensional functions. Based on an extension of classical, simulated annealing, this approach appears robust with respect to avoiding local minima. Further, unlike some of its…
We study the interplay between the data distribution and Q-learning-based algorithms with function approximation. We provide a unified theoretical and empirical analysis as to how different properties of the data distribution influence the…
Recent advancements in offline reinforcement learning (RL) have underscored the capabilities of Conditional Sequence Modeling (CSM), a paradigm that learns the action distribution based on history trajectory and target returns for each…
This paper describes the formulation and experimental testing of a novel method for the estimation and approximation of submanifold models of animal motion. It is assumed that the animal motion is supported on a configuration manifold $Q$…