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In this paper, we present a brief survey of Reinforcement Learning (RL), with particular emphasis on Stochastic Approximation (SA) as a unifying theme. The scope of the paper includes Markov Reward Processes, Markov Decision Processes,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-04 Mathukumalli Vidyasagar

We provide performance guarantees for a variant of simulation-based policy iteration for controlling Markov decision processes that involves the use of stochastic approximation algorithms along with state-of-the-art techniques that are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-17 Anna Winnicki , R. Srikant

Multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL) is the generalization of standard reinforcement learning (RL) approaches to solve sequential decision making problems that consist of several, possibly conflicting, objectives. Generally, in…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-10-08 Xi Chen , Ali Ghadirzadeh , Mårten Björkman , Patric Jensfelt

Multi-task learning is a very challenging problem in reinforcement learning. While training multiple tasks jointly allow the policies to share parameters across different tasks, the optimization problem becomes non-trivial: It remains…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-08 Ruihan Yang , Huazhe Xu , Yi Wu , Xiaolong Wang

Multi-objective Markov decision processes are a special kind of multi-objective optimization problem that involves sequential decision making while satisfying the Markov property of stochastic processes. Multi-objective reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-22 Sherif Abdelfattah , Kathryn Kasmarik , Jiankun Hu

Constraint handling plays a key role in solving realistic complex optimization problems. Though intensively discussed in the last few decades, existing constraint handling techniques predominantly rely on human experts' designs, which more…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Qianhao Zhu , Sijie Ma , Zeyuan Ma , Hongshu Guo , Yue-Jiao Gong

In this paper we design hybrid control policies for hybrid systems whose mathematical models are unknown. Our contributions are threefold. First, we propose a framework for modelling the hybrid control design problem as a single Markov…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-09-03 Meet Gandhi , Atreyee Kundu , Shalabh Bhatnagar

Reinforcement learning (RL) is currently one of the most prominent methods for optimizing dynamical systems, with breakthrough results across various fields. The framework is based on the concept of a Markov decision process (MDP), leading…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-17 Rene Carmona , Mathieu Lauriere

The rapid changes in the finance industry due to the increasing amount of data have revolutionized the techniques on data processing and data analysis and brought new theoretical and computational challenges. In contrast to classical…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2023-03-01 Ben Hambly , Renyuan Xu , Huining Yang

Although deep RL models have shown a great potential for solving various types of tasks with minimal supervision, several key challenges remain in terms of learning from limited experience, adapting to environmental changes, and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-07-10 Dongjae Kim , Jee Hang Lee , Jae Hoon Shin , Minsu Abel Yang , Sang Wan Lee

Workers spend a significant amount of time learning how to make good decisions. Evaluating the efficacy of a given decision, however, can be complicated -- e.g., decision outcomes are often long-term and relate to the original decision in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-20 Hamsa Bastani , Osbert Bastani , Wichinpong Park Sinchaisri

Controllable Markov chains describe the dynamics of sequential decision making tasks and are the central component in optimal control and reinforcement learning. In this work, we give the general form of an optimal policy for learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-24 Peter N. Loxley

This paper seeks to establish a framework for directing a society of simple, specialized, self-interested agents to solve what traditionally are posed as monolithic single-agent sequential decision problems. What makes it challenging to use…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-17 Michael Chang , Sidhant Kaushik , S. Matthew Weinberg , Thomas L. Griffiths , Sergey Levine

We consider a new form of reinforcement learning (RL) that is based on opportunities to directly learn the optimal control policy and a general Markov decision process (MDP) framework devised to support these opportunities. Derivations of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-02 Yingdong Lu , Mark S. Squillante , Chai Wah Wu

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

In this paper we develop a unified approach for solving a wide class of sequential selection problems. This class includes, but is not limited to, selection problems with no-information, rank-dependent rewards, and considers both fixed as…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-01-27 Alexander Goldenshluger , Yaakov Malinovsky , Assaf Zeevi

Randomly masking and predicting word tokens has been a successful approach in pre-training language models for a variety of downstream tasks. In this work, we observe that the same idea also applies naturally to sequential decision-making,…

We study the problem of learning sequential decision-making policies in settings with multiple state-action representations. Such settings naturally arise in many domains, such as planning (e.g., multiple integer programming formulations)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-11 Jialin Song , Ravi Lanka , Yisong Yue , Masahiro Ono

Evolutionary algorithms, such as Differential Evolution, excel in solving real-parameter optimization challenges. However, the effectiveness of a single algorithm varies across different problem instances, necessitating considerable efforts…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-03-08 Hongshu Guo , Yining Ma , Zeyuan Ma , Jiacheng Chen , Xinglin Zhang , Zhiguang Cao , Jun Zhang , Yue-Jiao Gong

In classic reinforcement learning (RL) and decision making problems, policies are evaluated with respect to a scalar reward function, and all optimal policies are the same with regards to their expected return. However, many real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-02 Han Shao , Lee Cohen , Avrim Blum , Yishay Mansour , Aadirupa Saha , Matthew R. Walter