English
Related papers

Related papers: Discounted Reinforcement Learning Is Not an Optimi…

200 papers

Can deep reinforcement learning algorithms be exploited as solvers for optimal trading strategies? The aim of this work is to test reinforcement learning algorithms on conceptually simple, but mathematically non-trivial, trading…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2020-04-10 Ayman Chaouki , Stephen Hardiman , Christian Schmidt , Emmanuel Sérié , Joachim de Lataillade

Model-free or learning-based control, in particular, reinforcement learning (RL), is expected to be applied for complex robotic tasks. Traditional RL requires a policy to be optimized is state-dependent, that means, the policy is a kind of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-09 Taisuke Kobayashi , Kenta Yoshizawa

The policy gradient theorem describes the gradient of the expected discounted return with respect to an agent's policy parameters. However, most policy gradient methods drop the discount factor from the state distribution and therefore do…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-02 Chris Nota , Philip S. Thomas

During probabilistic learning organisms often apply a sub-optimal "probability-matching" strategy, where selection rates match reward probabilities, rather than engaging in the optimal "maximization" strategy, where the option with the…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2021-12-09 Liran Szlak , Kristoffer Aberg , Rony Paz

Many healthcare decisions involve navigating through a multitude of treatment options in a sequential and iterative manner to find an optimal treatment pathway with the goal of an optimal patient outcome. Such optimization problems may be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-10 Elsa Riachi , Muhammad Mamdani , Michael Fralick , Frank Rudzicz

Existing studies on constrained reinforcement learning (RL) may obtain a well-performing policy in the training environment. However, when deployed in a real environment, it may easily violate constraints that were originally satisfied…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-06 Zhongchang Sun , Sihong He , Fei Miao , Shaofeng Zou

Prior work has proposed a simple strategy for reinforcement learning (RL): label experience with the outcomes achieved in that experience, and then imitate the relabeled experience. These outcome-conditioned imitation learning methods are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-21 Benjamin Eysenbach , Soumith Udatha , Sergey Levine , Ruslan Salakhutdinov

One of the challenges in applying reinforcement learning in a complex real-world environment lies in providing the agent with a sufficiently detailed reward function. Any misalignment between the reward and the desired behavior can result…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Neta Glazer , Aviv Navon , Aviv Shamsian , Ethan Fetaya

We study online learning in adversarial nonstationary environments. Since the future can be very different from the past, a critical challenge is to gracefully forget the history while new data comes in. To formalize this intuition, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-21 Zhiyu Zhang , David Bombara , Heng Yang

Constrained reinforcement learning is to maximize the expected reward subject to constraints on utilities/costs. However, the training environment may not be the same as the test one, due to, e.g., modeling error, adversarial attack,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-16 Yue Wang , Fei Miao , Shaofeng Zou

We consider a class of reinforcement-learning systems in which the agent follows a behavior policy to explore a discrete state-action space to find an optimal policy while adhering to some restriction on its behavior. Such restriction may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-07 Peter C. Y. Chen

Measurement and estimation of parameters are essential for science and engineering, where one of the main quests is to find systematic schemes that can achieve high precision. While conventional schemes for quantum parameter estimation…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-04-29 Han Xu , Junning Li , Liqiang Liu , Yu Wang , Haidong Yuan , Xin Wang

In this theoretical paper we are concerned with the problem of learning a value function by a smooth general function approximator, to solve a deterministic episodic control problem in a large continuous state space. It is shown that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-01-04 Michael Fairbank , Eduardo Alonso

This article presents a short and concise description of stochastic approximation algorithms in reinforcement learning of Markov decision processes. The algorithms can also be used as a suboptimal method for partially observed Markov…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-12-25 Vikram Krishnamurthy

The common purpose of applying reinforcement learning (RL) to asset management is the maximization of profit. The extrinsic reward function used to learn an optimal strategy typically does not take into account any other preferences or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-16 Charl Maree , Christian W. Omlin

Goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (RL) concerns the problem of training an agent to maximize the probability of reaching target goal states. This paper presents an analysis of the goal-conditioned setting based on optimal control. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Nathan P. Lawrence , Ali Mesbah

Recent efforts to develop trustworthy AI systems have increased interest in learning problems with explicit requirements, or constraints. In deep learning, however, such problems are often handled through fixed weighted-sum penalization:…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Juan Ramirez , Meraj Hashemizadeh , Simon Lacoste-Julien

Designing an effective reward function has long been a challenge in reinforcement learning, particularly for complex tasks in unstructured environments. To address this, various learning paradigms have emerged that leverage different forms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-29 Muhammad Qasim Elahi , Somtochukwu Oguchienti , Maheed H. Ahmed , Mahsa Ghasemi

Recently, reinforcement learning has achieved remarkable results in various domains, including robotics, games, natural language processing, and finance. In the financial domain, this approach has been applied to tasks such as portfolio…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2025-08-07 Caio de Souza Barbosa Costa , Anna Helena Reali Costa

Reinforcement Learning and the Evolutionary Strategy are two major approaches in addressing complicated control problems. Both are strong contenders and have their own devotee communities. Both groups have been very active in developing new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-03-08 Shangtong Zhang , Osmar R. Zaiane