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Value function approximation is important in modern reinforcement learning (RL) problems especially when the state space is (infinitely) large. Despite the importance and wide applicability of value function approximation, its theoretical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-24 Hanlin Zhu , Ruosong Wang , Jason D. Lee

In this paper, we study the contextual multinomial logit (MNL) bandit problem in which a learning agent sequentially selects an assortment based on contextual information, and user feedback follows an MNL choice model. There has been a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-17 Joongkyu Lee , Min-hwan Oh

Recent studies have shown that reinforcement learning with KL-regularized objectives can enjoy faster rates of convergence or logarithmic regret, in contrast to the classical $\sqrt{T}$-type regret in the unregularized setting. However, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Kaixuan Ji , Qingyue Zhao , Heyang Zhao , Qiwei Di , Quanquan Gu

We consider online learning for episodic stochastically constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), which plays a central role in ensuring the safety of reinforcement learning. Here the loss function can vary arbitrarily across the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-19 Shuang Qiu , Xiaohan Wei , Zhuoran Yang , Jieping Ye , Zhaoran Wang

This paper studies regret minimization with randomized value functions in reinforcement learning. In tabular finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes, we introduce a clipping variant of one classical Thompson Sampling (TS)-like algorithm,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-10 Priyank Agrawal , Jinglin Chen , Nan Jiang

In this paper, we propose and study opportunistic reinforcement learning - a new variant of reinforcement learning problems where the regret of selecting a suboptimal action varies under an external environmental condition known as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-26 Xiaoxiao Wang , Nader Bouacida , Xueying Guo , Xin Liu

We study the role of the representation of state-action value functions in regret minimization in finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with linear structure. We first derive a necessary condition on the representation, called…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-29 Matteo Papini , Andrea Tirinzoni , Aldo Pacchiano , Marcello Restelli , Alessandro Lazaric , Matteo Pirotta

The Matrix Multiplicative Weight Update (MMWU) is a seminal online learning algorithm with numerous applications. Applied to the matrix version of the Learning from Expert Advice (LEA) problem on the $d$-dimensional spectraplex, it is well…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-12 Weiyuan Gong , Tongyang Li , Xinzhao Wang , Zhiyu Zhang

We study computationally and statistically efficient reinforcement learning under the linear $Q^{\pi}$ realizability assumption, where any policy's $Q$-function is linear in a given state-action feature representation. Prior methods in this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Yijing Ke , Zihan Zhang , Ruosong Wang

We study online learning in repeated first-price auctions where a bidder, only observing the winning bid at the end of each auction, learns to adaptively bid in order to maximize her cumulative payoff. To achieve this goal, the bidder faces…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-06 Yanjun Han , Zhengyuan Zhou , Tsachy Weissman

In this paper, we consider the problem of online learning of Markov decision processes (MDPs) with very large state spaces. Under the assumptions of realizable function approximation and low Bellman ranks, we develop an online learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Kefan Dong , Jian Peng , Yining Wang , Yuan Zhou

This work pioneers regret analysis of risk-sensitive reinforcement learning in partially observable environments with hindsight observation, addressing a gap in theoretical exploration. We introduce a novel formulation that integrates…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-29 Tonghe Zhang , Yu Chen , Longbo Huang

In standard RL, a learner attempts to learn an optimal policy for a Markov Decision Process whose structure (e.g. state space) is known. In online model selection, a learner attempts to learn an optimal policy for an MDP knowing only that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Alireza Masoumian , James R. Wright

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms that estimate state and state-action value functions have been shown to be effective in a variety of challenging domains, including learning control strategies from raw image pixels. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-26 Peter Jin , Kurt Keutzer , Sergey Levine

We consider reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) with linear function approximation under drifting environment. Specifically, both the reward and state transition functions can evolve over time but their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Huozhi Zhou , Jinglin Chen , Lav R. Varshney , Ashish Jagmohan

We study algorithms using randomized value functions for exploration in reinforcement learning. This type of algorithms enjoys appealing empirical performance. We show that when we use 1) a single random seed in each episode, and 2) a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-14 Zhihan Xiong , Ruoqi Shen , Qiwen Cui , Maryam Fazel , Simon S. Du

In order to make good decision under uncertainty an agent must learn from observations. To do so, two of the most common frameworks are Contextual Bandits and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). In this paper, we study whether there exist…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Andrea Zanette , Emma Brunskill

Recently, model-free reinforcement learning has attracted research attention due to its simplicity, memory and computation efficiency, and the flexibility to combine with function approximation. In this paper, we propose Exploration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-10 Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Chen-Yu Wei , Rahul Jain , Haipeng Luo

We propose a simple model selection approach for algorithms in stochastic bandit and reinforcement learning problems. As opposed to prior work that (implicitly) assumes knowledge of the optimal regret, we only require that each base…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-25 Aldo Pacchiano , Christoph Dann , Claudio Gentile , Peter Bartlett

In safety-critical applications of reinforcement learning such as healthcare and robotics, it is often desirable to optimize risk-sensitive objectives that account for tail outcomes rather than expected reward. We prove the first regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-12 O. Bastani , Y. J. Ma , E. Shen , W. Xu