Related papers: Causal Markov Decision Processes: Learning Good In…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…
In reinforcement learning, Monte Carlo algorithms update the Q function by averaging the episodic returns. In the Monte Carlo UCB (MC-UCB) algorithm, the action taken in each state is the action that maximizes the Q function plus an Upper…
A Tree Markov Decision Problem (T-MDP) is a finite-horizon MDP with a starting state $s_{1}$, in which every state is reachable from $s_{1}$ through exactly one state-action trajectory. T-MDPs arise naturally as abstractions of decision…
This work provides a novel interpretation of Markov Decision Processes (MDP) from the online optimization viewpoint. In such an online optimization context, the policy of the MDP is viewed as the decision variable while the corresponding…
We consider a stochastic inventory control problem under censored demands, lost sales, and positive lead times. This is a fundamental problem in inventory management, with significant literature establishing near-optimality of a simple…
Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…
We study the role of the representation of state-action value functions in regret minimization in finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with linear structure. We first derive a necessary condition on the representation, called…
We consider a reinforcement learning (RL) setting in which the agent interacts with a sequence of episodic MDPs. At the start of each episode the agent has access to some side-information or context that determines the dynamics of the MDP…
The Markov Decision Process (MDP) is a popular framework for sequential decision-making problems, and uncertainty quantification is an essential component of it to learn optimal decision-making strategies. In particular, a Bayesian…
Contextual Markov decision processes (CMDPs) describe a class of reinforcement learning problems in which the transition kernels and reward functions can change over time with different MDPs indexed by a context variable. While CMDPs serve…
We consider online learning in episodic loop-free Markov decision processes (MDPs), where the loss function can change arbitrarily between episodes, and the transition function is not known to the learner. We show…
The distributionally robust Markov Decision Process (MDP) approach asks for a distributionally robust policy that achieves the maximal expected total reward under the most adversarial distribution of uncertain parameters. In this paper, we…
The contextual combinatorial semi-bandit problem with linear payoff functions is a decision-making problem in which a learner chooses a set of arms with the feature vectors in each round under given constraints so as to maximize the sum of…
We study discrete-time discounted constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) on Borel spaces with unbounded reward functions. In our approach the transition probability functions are weakly or set-wise continuous. The reward functions…
This paper studies the problem of Anytime-Competitive Markov Decision Process (A-CMDP). Existing works on Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) aim to optimize the expected reward while constraining the expected cost over random…
Robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) have received significant research interest, offering an alternative to standard Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that often assume fixed transition probabilities. RMDPs address this by optimizing…
We present two new classes of causal models of decision-making agents. Our approach is motivated by the needs of modeling the economics of computing systems. These systems are composed of subsystems and can exhibit endogenous limits on…
We consider a planning problem where the dynamics and rewards of the environment depend on a hidden static parameter referred to as the context. The objective is to learn a strategy that maximizes the accumulated reward across all contexts.…
It is common to address the curse of dimensionality in Markov decision processes (MDPs) by exploiting low-rank representations. This motivates much of the recent theoretical study on linear MDPs. However, most approaches require a given…
General purpose intelligent learning agents cycle through (complex,non-MDP) sequences of observations, actions, and rewards. On the other hand, reinforcement learning is well-developed for small finite state Markov Decision Processes…