Related papers: Greedy-GQ with Variance Reduction: Finite-time Ana…
Policy gradient (PG) methods are the backbone of many reinforcement learning algorithms due to their good performance in policy optimization problems. As a gradient-based approach, PG methods typically rely on knowledge of the system…
Unlike traditional model-based reinforcement learning approaches that estimate system parameters from data, non-model-based data-driven control learns the optimal policy directly from input-state data without any intermediate model…
Improving the sample efficiency in reinforcement learning has been a long-standing research problem. In this work, we aim to reduce the sample complexity of existing policy gradient methods. We propose a novel policy gradient algorithm…
Single-server queues with customer abandonment arise in call centers and many service systems, but steady-state performance measures remain analytically intractable beyond Markovian assumptions. This paper develops Robust Queueing (RQ)…
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…
The closed-loop stability and infinite-horizon performance of receding-horizon approximations are studied for non-stationary linear-quadratic regulator (LQR) problems. The approach is based on a lifted reformulation of the optimal control…
Recent developments in Reinforcement learning have significantly enhanced sequential decision-making in uncertain environments. Despite their strong performance guarantees, most existing work has focused primarily on improving the…
We propose a new yet natural algorithm for learning the graph structure of general discrete graphical models (a.k.a. Markov random fields) from samples. Our algorithm finds the neighborhood of a node by sequentially adding nodes that…
We consider the continuous-time Linear-Quadratic-Regulator (LQR) problem in terms of optimizing a real-valued matrix function over the set of feedback gains. The results developed are in parallel to those in Bu et al. [1] for discrete-time…
Recent works have shown that gradient-update alignment is a powerful signal for modulating optimizer updates, often leading to faster training. We promote this update-wise heuristic as a mathematically grounded principle for selecting and…
We study nonconvex finite-sum problems and analyze stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) methods for them. SVRG and related methods have recently surged into prominence for convex optimization given their edge over stochastic gradient…
In this paper, we study decentralized empirical risk minimization problems, where the goal is to minimize a finite-sum of smooth and strongly-convex functions available over a network of nodes. In this Part I, we propose…
We present and analyze an algorithm designed for addressing vector-valued regression problems involving possibly infinite-dimensional input and output spaces. The algorithm is a randomized adaptation of reduced rank regression, a technique…
Greedy Equivalence Search (GES) is a classic score-based algorithm for causal discovery from observational data. In the sample limit, it recovers the Markov equivalence class of graphs that describe the data. Still, it faces two challenges…
Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets; GFNs) are a family of energy-based generative methods for combinatorial objects, capable of generating diverse and high-utility samples. However, consistently biasing GFNs towards producing high-utility…
Greedy kernel approximation algorithms are successful techniques for sparse and accurate data-based modelling and function approximation. Based on a recent idea of stabilization of such algorithms in the scalar output case, we here consider…
We investigate the performance of a deterministic GREEDY algorithm for the problem of maximizing functions under a partition matroid constraint. We consider non-monotone submodular functions and monotone subadditive functions. Even though…
Many problems require the selection of a subset of variables from a full set of optimization variables. The computational complexity of an exhaustive search over all possible subsets of variables is, however, prohibitively expensive,…
In this paper, we propose a novel reinforcement- learning algorithm consisting in a stochastic variance-reduced version of policy gradient for solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Stochastic variance-reduced gradient (SVRG) methods…
Closeness is a widely-used centrality measure in social network analysis. For a node it indicates the reciprocal of the average shortest-path distance to the other nodes of the network. While the identification of the k nodes with highest…