Related papers: Improved Worst-Case Regret Bounds for Randomized L…
We study regret minimization for infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under cost constraints. We start by designing a policy optimization algorithm with carefully designed action-value estimator and bonus term,…
Obtaining first-order regret bounds -- regret bounds scaling not as the worst-case but with some measure of the performance of the optimal policy on a given instance -- is a core question in sequential decision-making. While such bounds…
We discuss a multiple-play multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem in which several arms are selected at each round. Recently, Thompson sampling (TS), a randomized algorithm with a Bayesian spirit, has attracted much attention for its empirically…
We study episodic reinforcement learning in non-stationary linear (a.k.a. low-rank) Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), i.e, both the reward and transition kernel are linear with respect to a given feature map and are allowed to evolve either…
We propose a framework which generalizes "decision making with structured observations" by allowing robust (i.e. multivalued) models. In this framework, each model associates each decision with a convex set of probability distributions over…
We revisit online binary classification by shifting the focus from competing with the best-in-class binary loss to competing against relaxed benchmarks that capture smoothed notions of optimality. Instead of measuring regret relative to the…
We study model-based reinforcement learning in an unknown finite communicating Markov decision process. We propose a simple algorithm that leverages a variance based confidence interval. We show that the proposed algorithm, UCRL-V, achieves…
Thompson Sampling has been widely used for contextual bandit problems due to the flexibility of its modeling power. However, a general theory for this class of methods in the frequentist setting is still lacking. In this paper, we present a…
We consider reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the infinite-horizon, average-reward setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, a continuous-time process moves to a state and stays there for a…
Recursive least-squares algorithms often use forgetting factors as a heuristic to adapt to non-stationary data streams. The first contribution of this paper rigorously characterizes the effect of forgetting factors for a class of online…
We investigate the problem of cumulative regret minimization for individual sequence prediction with respect to the best expert in a finite family of size K under limited access to information. We assume that in each round, the learner can…
We study episodic reinforcement learning with fixed reward and transition functions, but with episode-dependent admissible action sets that are observed at the start of each episode. Performance is measured by cumulative regret against the…
We consider reinforcement learning in parameterized Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), where the parameterization may induce correlation across transition probabilities or rewards. Consequently, observing a particular state transition might…
In this correspondence, we introduce a minimax regret criteria to the least squares problems with bounded data uncertainties and solve it using semi-definite programming. We investigate a robust minimax least squares approach that minimizes…
Multi-criteria decision-making often requires finding a small representative set from the database. A recently proposed method is the regret minimization set (RMS) query. RMS returns a size $r$ subset $S$ of dataset $D$ that minimizes the…
The classical theory of reinforcement learning (RL) has focused on tabular and linear representations of value functions. Further progress hinges on combining RL with modern function approximators such as kernel functions and deep neural…
We study variance-dependent regret bounds for Markov decision processes (MDPs). Algorithms with variance-dependent regret guarantees can automatically exploit environments with low variance (e.g., enjoying constant regret on deterministic…
In this paper, we study reinforcement learning in Markov Decision Processes with Probabilistic Reward Machines (PRMs), a form of non-Markovian reward commonly found in robotics tasks. We design an algorithm for PRMs that achieves a regret…
We consider the problem of learning the optimal policy for Markov decision processes with safety constraints. We formulate the problem in a reach-avoid setup. Our goal is to design online reinforcement learning algorithms that ensure safety…
Most known regret bounds for reinforcement learning are either episodic or assume an environment without traps. We derive a regret bound without making either assumption, by allowing the algorithm to occasionally delegate an action to an…