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Distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DRRL) focuses on designing policies that achieve good performance under model uncertainties. The goal is to maximize the worst-case long-term discounted reward, where the data for RL comes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Saptarshi Mandal , Yashaswini Murthy , R. Srikant

Consider the following problem: given two arbitrary densities $q_1,q_2$ and a sample-access to an unknown target density $p$, find which of the $q_i$'s is closer to $p$ in total variation. A remarkable result due to Yatracos shows that this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Olivier Bousquet , Daniel Kane , Shay Moran

We establish optimal Statistical Query (SQ) lower bounds for robustly learning certain families of discrete high-dimensional distributions. In particular, we show that no efficient SQ algorithm with access to an $\epsilon$-corrupted binary…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-06-10 Ilias Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Yuxin Sun

Motivated by the study of $Q$-learning algorithms in reinforcement learning, we study a class of stochastic approximation procedures based on operators that satisfy monotonicity and quasi-contractivity conditions with respect to an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-25 Martin J. Wainwright

Hypothesis Selection is a fundamental distribution learning problem where given a comparator-class $Q=\{q_1,\ldots, q_n\}$ of distributions, and a sampling access to an unknown target distribution $p$, the goal is to output a distribution…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-19 Olivier Bousquet , Mark Braverman , Klim Efremenko , Gillat Kol , Shay Moran

We consider the question of learning $Q$-function in a sample efficient manner for reinforcement learning with continuous state and action spaces under a generative model. If $Q$-function is Lipschitz continuous, then the minimal sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-12 Devavrat Shah , Dogyoon Song , Zhi Xu , Yuzhe Yang

Q-learning suffers from overestimation bias, because it approximates the maximum action value using the maximum estimated action value. Algorithms have been proposed to reduce overestimation bias, but we lack an understanding of how bias…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-10 Qingfeng Lan , Yangchen Pan , Alona Fyshe , Martha White

Q-Learning is a fundamental off-policy reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm that has the objective of approximating action-value functions in order to learn optimal policies. Nonetheless, it has difficulties in reconciling bias with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-22 Mahammad Humayoo

We study the problem of learning the optimal policy in a discounted, infinite-horizon reinforcement learning (RL) setting in the presence of adversarially corrupted rewards. To address this problem, we develop a novel robust variant of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Sreejeet Maity , Aritra Mitra

Dynamic decision-making under distributional shifts is of fundamental interest in theory and applications of reinforcement learning: The distribution of the environment in which the data is collected can differ from that of the environment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

Given a finite family of functions, the goal of model selection aggregation is to construct a procedure that mimics the function from this family that is the closest to an unknown regression function. More precisely, we consider a general…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-12-13 Dong Dai , Philippe Rigollet , Tong Zhang

Solving high-dimensional partial differential equations (PDEs) is a major challenge in scientific computing. We develop a new numerical method for solving elliptic-type PDEs by adapting the Q-learning algorithm in reinforcement learning.…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2023-06-27 Samuel N. Cohen , Deqing Jiang , Justin Sirignano

Understanding the theoretical capabilities and limitations of quantum machine learning (QML) models to solve machine learning tasks is crucial to advancing both quantum software and hardware developments. Similarly to the classical setting,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-03-31 Qiuhao Chen , Yuling Jiao , Yinan Li , Xiliang Lu , Jerry Zhijian Yang

It is well known that the extension of Watkins' algorithm to general function approximation settings is challenging: does the projected Bellman equation have a solution? If so, is the solution useful in the sense of generating a good…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-11 Prashant G. Mehta , Sean P. Meyn

Off-Policy Evaluation (OPE) serves as one of the cornerstones in Reinforcement Learning (RL). Fitted Q Evaluation (FQE) with various function approximators, especially deep neural networks, has gained practical success. While statistical…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-02-11 Ruiqi Zhang , Xuezhou Zhang , Chengzhuo Ni , Mengdi Wang

The Q-learning algorithm is known to be affected by the maximization bias, i.e. the systematic overestimation of action values, an important issue that has recently received renewed attention. Double Q-learning has been proposed as an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-03 Rong Zhu , Mattia Rigotti

We introduce and analyze a form of variance-reduced $Q$-learning. For $\gamma$-discounted MDPs with finite state space $\mathcal{X}$ and action space $\mathcal{U}$, we prove that it yields an $\epsilon$-accurate estimate of the optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-09 Martin J. Wainwright

We develop a model selection approach to tackle reinforcement learning with adversarial corruption in both transition and reward. For finite-horizon tabular MDPs, without prior knowledge on the total amount of corruption, our algorithm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-31 Chen-Yu Wei , Christoph Dann , Julian Zimmert

Q-learning is a stochastic approximation version of the classic value iteration. The literature has established that Q-learning suffers from both maximization bias and slower convergence. Recently, multi-step algorithms have shown practical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-03 Antony Vijesh , Shreyas S R

In the past few years, off-policy reinforcement learning methods have shown promising results in their application for robot control. Deep Q-learning, however, still suffers from poor data-efficiency and is susceptible to stochasticity in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-17 Gabriel Kalweit , Maria Huegle , Joschka Boedecker