Related papers: Variance-Reduced Off-Policy TDC Learning: Non-Asym…
Off-policy learning allows us to learn about possible policies of behavior from experience generated by a different behavior policy. Temporal difference (TD) learning algorithms can become unstable when combined with function approximation…
The family of temporal difference (TD) methods span a spectrum from computationally frugal linear methods like TD({\lambda}) to data efficient least squares methods. Least square methods make the best use of available data directly…
Policy evaluation algorithms are essential to reinforcement learning due to their ability to predict the performance of a policy. However, there are two long-standing issues lying in this prediction problem that need to be tackled:…
We provide non-asymptotic bounds for the well-known temporal difference learning algorithm TD(0) with linear function approximators. These include high-probability bounds as well as bounds in expectation. Our analysis suggests that a…
Reinforcement learning algorithms typically rely on the assumption that the environment dynamics and value function can be expressed in terms of a Markovian state representation. However, when state information is only partially observable,…
We consider the problem of offline reinforcement learning (RL) -- a well-motivated setting of RL that aims at policy optimization using only historical data. Despite its wide applicability, theoretical understandings of offline RL, such as…
We consider decentralized time-varying stochastic optimization problems where each of the functions held by the nodes has a finite sum structure. Such problems can be efficiently solved using variance reduction techniques. Our aim is to…
Temporal difference learning with linear function approximation is a popular method to obtain a low-dimensional approximation of the value function of a policy in a Markov Decision Process. We give a new interpretation of this method in…
We devise a distributional variant of gradient temporal-difference (TD) learning. Distributional reinforcement learning has been demonstrated to outperform the regular one in the recent study \citep{bellemare2017distributional}. In the…
This paper analyzes multi-step temporal difference (TD)-learning algorithms within the ``deadly triad'' scenario, characterized by linear function approximation, off-policy learning, and bootstrapping. In particular, we prove that $n$-step…
Emphatic Temporal Difference (ETD) learning has recently been proposed as a convergent off-policy learning method. ETD was proposed mainly to address convergence issues of conventional Temporal Difference (TD) learning under off-policy…
Policy iteration is one of the classical frameworks of reinforcement learning, which requires a known initial stabilizing control. However, finding the initial stabilizing control depends on the known system model. To relax this requirement…
We study the $(\varepsilon, \delta)$-PAC policy identification problem in finite-horizon episodic Markov Decision Processes. Existing approaches provide finite-time guarantees for approximate settings ($\varepsilon>0$) but suffer from high…
We consider the off-policy evaluation problem in Markov decision processes with function approximation. We propose a generalization of the recently introduced \emph{emphatic temporal differences} (ETD) algorithm \citep{SuttonMW15}, which…
The goal of this manuscript is to conduct a controltheoretic analysis of Temporal Difference (TD) learning algorithms. TD-learning serves as a cornerstone in the realm of reinforcement learning, offering a methodology for approximating the…
One of the most basic problems in reinforcement learning (RL) is policy evaluation: estimating the long-term return, i.e., value function, corresponding to a given fixed policy. The celebrated Temporal Difference (TD) learning algorithm…
Reinforcement learning lies at the intersection of several challenges. Many applications of interest involve extremely large state spaces, requiring function approximation to enable tractable computation. In addition, the learner has only a…
We study the convergence behavior of the celebrated temporal-difference (TD) learning algorithm. By looking at the algorithm through the lens of optimization, we first argue that TD can be viewed as an iterative optimization algorithm where…
We study the estimation of the value function for continuous-time Markov diffusion processes using a single, discretely observed ergodic trajectory. Our work provides non-asymptotic statistical guarantees for the least-squares…
We propose and analyze an alternate approach to off-policy multi-step temporal difference learning, in which off-policy returns are corrected with the current Q-function in terms of rewards, rather than with the target policy in terms of…