Related papers: Exploring TD error as a heuristic for $\sigma$ sel…
Unifying seemingly disparate algorithmic ideas to produce better performing algorithms has been a longstanding goal in reinforcement learning. As a primary example, TD($\lambda$) elegantly unifies one-step TD prediction with Monte Carlo…
Temporal-difference (TD) learning is an important field in reinforcement learning. Sarsa and Q-Learning are among the most used TD algorithms. The Q($\sigma$) algorithm (Sutton and Barto (2017)) unifies both. This paper extends the…
Recently, a new multi-step temporal learning algorithm, called $Q(\sigma)$, unifies $n$-step Tree-Backup (when $\sigma=0$) and $n$-step Sarsa (when $\sigma=1$) by introducing a sampling parameter $\sigma$. However, similar to other…
In reinforcement learning, the TD($\lambda$) algorithm is a fundamental policy evaluation method with an efficient online implementation that is suitable for large-scale problems. One practical drawback of TD($\lambda$) is its sensitivity…
Full-sampling (e.g., Q-learning) and pure-expectation (e.g., Expected Sarsa) algorithms are efficient and frequently used techniques in reinforcement learning. Q$(\sigma,\lambda)$ is the first approach unifies them with eligibility trace…
This document is a guide to the implementation of true online emphatic TD($\lambda$), a model-free temporal-difference algorithm for learning to make long-term predictions which combines the emphasis idea (Sutton, Mahmood & White 2015) and…
The true online TD({\lambda}) algorithm has recently been proposed (van Seijen and Sutton, 2014) as a universal replacement for the popular TD({\lambda}) algorithm, in temporal-difference learning and reinforcement learning. True online…
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…
Learning the value function of a given policy from data samples is an important problem in Reinforcement Learning. TD($\lambda$) is a popular class of algorithms to solve this problem. However, the weights assigned to different $n$-step…
In this paper, we develop a new planning method that extends the capabilities of the true online TD to allow an agent to efficiently replay all or part of its past experience, online in the sequence that they appear with, either in each…
Q($\sigma$) is a recently proposed temporal-difference learning method that interpolates between learning from expected backups and sampled backups. It has been shown that intermediate values for the interpolation parameter $\sigma \in…
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…
Temporal difference (TD) methods constitute a class of methods for learning predictions in multi-step prediction problems, parameterized by a recency factor lambda. Currently the most important application of these methods is to temporal…
Temporal-Difference (TD) learning is a standard and very successful reinforcement learning approach, at the core of both algorithms that learn the value of a given policy, as well as algorithms which learn how to improve policies.…
We consider the contextual bandit problem, where a player sequentially makes decisions based on past observations to maximize the cumulative reward. Although many algorithms have been proposed for contextual bandit, most of them rely on…
The characterization of errors in a quantum system is a fundamental step for two important goals. First, learning about specific sources of error is essential for optimizing experimental design and error correction methods. Second,…
Thompson sampling is an algorithm for online decision problems where actions are taken sequentially in a manner that must balance between exploiting what is known to maximize immediate performance and investing to accumulate new information…
We address the problem of online sequential decision making, i.e., balancing the trade-off between exploiting the current knowledge to maximize immediate performance and exploring the new information to gain long-term benefits using the…
The problem of on-line off-policy evaluation (OPE) has been actively studied in the last decade due to its importance both as a stand-alone problem and as a module in a policy improvement scheme. However, most Temporal Difference (TD) based…
The design and performance analysis of bandit algorithms in the presence of stage-wise safety or reliability constraints has recently garnered significant interest. In this work, we consider the linear stochastic bandit problem under…