English
Related papers

Related papers: Is Plug-in Solver Sample-Efficient for Feature-bas…

200 papers

Reinforcement learning has become the standard for improving reasoning in large language models, yet evidence increasingly suggests that RL does not teach new strategies; it redistributes probability mass over solutions the base model…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Ömer Faruk Akgül , Rajgopal Kannan , Willie Neiswanger , Viktor Prasanna

We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with parameter uncertainty, under the robust MDP paradigm. Previous studies showed that robust MDPs, based on a minimax approach to handle uncertainty, can be solved using dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-06-27 Aviv Tamar , Huan Xu , Shie Mannor

We present a modular approach to \emph{reinforcement learning} (RL) in environments consisting of simpler components evolving in parallel. A monolithic view of such modular environments may be prohibitively large to learn, or may require…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-18 Milad Kazemi , Mateo Perez , Fabio Somenzi , Sadegh Soudjani , Ashutosh Trivedi , Alvaro Velasquez

In probably approximately correct (PAC) reinforcement learning (RL), an agent is required to identify an $\epsilon$-optimal policy with probability $1-\delta$. While minimax optimal algorithms exist for this problem, its instance-dependent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Andrea Tirinzoni , Aymen Al-Marjani , Emilie Kaufmann

In this paper, we study the non-asymptotic and asymptotic performances of the optimal robust policy and value function of robust Markov Decision Processes(MDPs), where the optimal robust policy and value function are solved only from a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-16 Wenhao Yang , Liangyu Zhang , Zhihua Zhang

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has the promise of providing data-driven support for decision-making in a wide range of problems in healthcare, education, business, and other domains. Classical RL methods focus on the mean of the total return…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-02 Elynn Y. Chen , Rui Song , Michael I. Jordan

In this paper, we propose a max-min entropy framework for reinforcement learning (RL) to overcome the limitation of the soft actor-critic (SAC) algorithm implementing the maximum entropy RL in model-free sample-based learning. Whereas the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-21 Seungyul Han , Youngchul Sung

Model-based reinforcement learning approaches carry the promise of being data efficient. However, due to challenges in learning dynamics models that sufficiently match the real-world dynamics, they struggle to achieve the same asymptotic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-17 Ignasi Clavera , Jonas Rothfuss , John Schulman , Yasuhiro Fujita , Tamim Asfour , Pieter Abbeel

While multitask representation learning has become a popular approach in reinforcement learning (RL), theoretical understanding of why and when it works remains limited. This paper presents analyses for the statistical benefit of multitask…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-16 Rui Lu , Gao Huang , Simon S. Du

The integration of reinforcement learning (RL) into large language models (LLMs) has opened new opportunities for recommender systems by eliciting reasoning and improving user preference modeling. However, RL-based LLM recommendation faces…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Lin Wang , Yang Zhang , Jingfan Chen , Xiaoyan Zhao , Fengbin Zhu , Qing Li , Tat-Seng Chua

In this paper we study online Reinforcement Learning (RL) in partially observable dynamical systems. We focus on the Predictive State Representations (PSRs) model, which is an expressive model that captures other well-known models such as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-16 Wenhao Zhan , Masatoshi Uehara , Wen Sun , Jason D. Lee

We present the first model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithm to synthesise policies for an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP), such that a linear time property is satisfied. The given temporal property is converted into a Limit…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-19 Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Alessandro Abate , Daniel Kroening

Reinforcement learning (RL) approaches based on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are predominantly applied in the robot joint space, often relying on limited task-specific information and partial awareness of the 3D environment. In…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Bingkun Huang , Yuhe Gong , Zewen Yang , Tianyu Ren , Luis Figueredo

The computational cost of stiff chemical kinetics remains a dominant bottleneck in reacting-flow simulation, yet hybrid integration strategies are typically driven by hand-tuned heuristics or supervised predictors that make myopic decisions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Eloghosa Ikponmwoba , Opeoluwa Owoyele

Robust Markov decision processes (r-MDPs) extend MDPs by explicitly modelling epistemic uncertainty about transition dynamics. Learning r-MDPs from interactions with an unknown environment enables the synthesis of robust policies with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-21 Yannik Schnitzer , Alessandro Abate , David Parker

Reinforcement learning has long struggled with poor sample efficiency. One promising approach to mitigate this problem is leveraging group-invariant Markov Decision Processes ($G$-invariant MDPs). Existing works in this direction have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Shuai Zhen , Yifan Zhang , Yuling Wang , Yanhua Yu

Recent advancements in deep reinforcement learning (RL) have demonstrated notable progress in sample efficiency, spanning both model-based and model-free paradigms. Despite the identification and mitigation of specific bottlenecks in prior…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Yibo Wang , Jiang Zhao

In an episodic Markov Decision Process (MDP) problem, an online algorithm chooses from a set of actions in a sequence of $H$ trials, where $H$ is the episode length, in order to maximize the total payoff of the chosen actions. Q-learning,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-11 Xu Zhu

A crucial problem in reinforcement learning is learning the optimal policy. We study this in tabular infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes under the online setting. The existing algorithms either fail to achieve regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-13 Xiang Ji , Gen Li

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a fundamental framework for sequential decision-making, in which an agent learns an optimal policy through interactions with an unknown environment. In settings with function approximation, many existing RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Ruiquan Huang , Donghao Li , Yingbin Liang , Jing Yang