English
Related papers

Related papers: A Convergent Off-Policy Temporal Difference Algori…

200 papers

In this paper we introduce the idea of improving the performance of parametric temporal-difference (TD) learning algorithms by selectively emphasizing or de-emphasizing their updates on different time steps. In particular, we show that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-07-21 Richard S. Sutton , A. Rupam Mahmood , Martha White

Off-policy learning refers to the problem of learning the value function of a way of behaving, or policy, while following a different policy. Gradient-based off-policy learning algorithms, such as GTD and TDC/GQ, converge even when using…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-12-15 Lucas Lehnert , Doina Precup

Temporal difference learning (TD) is a foundational concept in reinforcement learning (RL), aimed at efficiently assessing a policy's value function. TD($\lambda$), a potent variant, incorporates a memory trace to distribute the prediction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-13 Jianfei Ma

Emphatic Temporal Difference (ETD) learning has recently been proposed as a convergent off-policy learning method. ETD was proposed mainly to address convergence issues of conventional Temporal Difference (TD) learning under off-policy…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-03-04 Xiang Gu , Sina Ghiassian , Richard S. Sutton

Temporal difference (TD) learning is a foundational algorithm in reinforcement learning (RL). For nearly forty years, TD learning has served as a workhorse for applied RL as well as a building block for more complex and specialized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-24 Hwanwoo Kim , Panos Toulis , Eric Laber

We present a novel $l_1$ regularized off-policy convergent TD-learning method (termed RO-TD), which is able to learn sparse representations of value functions with low computational complexity. The algorithmic framework underlying RO-TD…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-11 Bo Liu , Sridhar Mahadevan , Ji Liu

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

This paper extends off-policy reinforcement learning to the multi-agent case in which a set of networked agents communicating with their neighbors according to a time-varying graph collaboratively evaluates and improves a target policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-20 Wesley Suttle , Zhuoran Yang , Kaiqing Zhang , Zhaoran Wang , Tamer Basar , Ji Liu

The goal of this manuscript is to conduct a controltheoretic analysis of Temporal Difference (TD) learning algorithms. TD-learning serves as a cornerstone in the realm of reinforcement learning, offering a methodology for approximating the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-09-12 Donghwan Lee , Do Wan Kim

We study the multi-step off-policy learning approach to distributional RL. Despite the apparent similarity between value-based RL and distributional RL, our study reveals intriguing and fundamental differences between the two cases in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-18 Yunhao Tang , Mark Rowland , Rémi Munos , Bernardo Ávila Pires , Will Dabney , Marc G. Bellemare

We study the convergence of off-policy TD(0) with linear function approximation when used to approximate the expected discounted reward in a Markov chain. It is well known that the combination of off-policy learning and function…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-02 Maik Overmars , Jasper Goseling , Richard Boucherie

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms are often categorized as either on-policy or off-policy depending on whether they use data from a target policy of interest or from a different behavior policy. In this paper, we study a subtle…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-12 Rujie Zhong , Duohan Zhang , Lukas Schäfer , Stefano V. Albrecht , Josiah P. Hanna

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

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

In this paper we present the first empirical study of the emphatic temporal-difference learning algorithm (ETD), comparing it with conventional temporal-difference learning, in particular, with linear TD(0), on on-policy and off-policy…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-05-15 Sina Ghiassian , Banafsheh Rafiee , Richard S. Sutton

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) looks at learning how to optimally solve tasks using a fixed dataset of interactions from the environment. Many off-policy algorithms developed for online learning struggle in the offline setting as they…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Natinael Solomon Neggatu , Jeremie Houssineau , Giovanni Montana

In the framework of Markov Decision Processes, off-policy learning, that is the problem of learning a linear approximation of the value function of some fixed policy from one trajectory possibly generated by some other policy. We briefly…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-04-16 Matthieu Geist , Bruno Scherrer

In this paper, we study the finite-sample statistical rates of distributional temporal difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation. The purpose of distributional TD learning is to estimate the return distribution of a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-18 Kaicheng Jin , Yang Peng , Jiansheng Yang , Zhihua Zhang

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

Temporal difference (TD) learning is a fundamental algorithm for estimating value functions in reinforcement learning. Recent finite-time analyses of TD with linear function approximation quantify its theoretical convergence rate. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Yunxiang Li , Mark Schmidt , Reza Babanezhad , Sharan Vaswani