Related papers: Non-Asymptotic Analysis for Two Time-scale TDC wit…
In this paper, we study the finite-sample statistical rates of distributional temporal difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation. The purpose of distributional TD learning is to estimate the return distribution of a…
Stochastic policies (also known as relaxed controls) are widely used in continuous-time reinforcement learning algorithms. However, executing a stochastic policy and evaluating its performance in a continuous-time environment remain open…
Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms combined with value function approximation have recently achieved impressive performance in a variety of application domains. However, the theoretical understanding of such algorithms is limited,…
Despite the wide applications of Adam in reinforcement learning (RL), the theoretical convergence of Adam-type RL algorithms has not been established. This paper provides the first such convergence analysis for two fundamental RL algorithms…
Value functions derived from Markov decision processes arise as a central component of algorithms as well as performance metrics in many statistics and engineering applications of machine learning techniques. Computation of the solution to…
We propose a stochastic approximation (SA) based method with randomization of samples for policy evaluation using the least squares temporal difference (LSTD) algorithm. Our proposed scheme is equivalent to running regular temporal…
Temporal difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation (linear TD) is a classic and powerful prediction algorithm in reinforcement learning. While it is well-understood that linear TD converges almost surely to a unique point,…
First order optimization algorithms play a major role in large scale machine learning. A new class of methods, called adaptive algorithms, were recently introduced to adjust iteratively the learning rate for each coordinate. Despite great…
Dynamic Programming suffers from the curse of dimensionality due to large state and action spaces, a challenge further compounded by uncertainties in the environment. To mitigate these issue, we explore an off-policy based Temporal…
The analysis of Temporal Difference (TD) learning in the average-reward setting faces notable theoretical difficulties because the Bellman operator is not contractive with respect to any norm. This complicates standard analyses of…
General Value Function (GVF) is a powerful tool to represent both the {\em predictive} and {\em retrospective} knowledge in reinforcement learning (RL). In practice, often multiple interrelated GVFs need to be evaluated jointly with…
Accurate value estimates are important for off-policy reinforcement learning. Algorithms based on temporal difference learning typically are prone to an over- or underestimation bias building up over time. In this paper, we propose a…
We consider the emphatic temporal-difference (TD) algorithm, ETD($\lambda$), for learning the value functions of stationary policies in a discounted, finite state and action Markov decision process. The ETD($\lambda$) algorithm was recently…
We study the finite-time convergence of TD learning with linear function approximation under Markovian sampling. Existing proofs for this setting either assume a projection step in the algorithm to simplify the analysis, or require a fairly…
Despite its popularity in the reinforcement learning community, a provably convergent policy gradient method for continuous space-time control problems with nonlinear state dynamics has been elusive. This paper proposes proximal gradient…
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…
We study the convergence of off-policy TD(0) with linear function approximation when used to approximate the expected discounted reward in a Markov chain. It is well known that the combination of off-policy learning and function…
Off-policy reinforcement learning has many applications including: learning from demonstration, learning multiple goal seeking policies in parallel, and representing predictive knowledge. Recently there has been an proliferation of new…
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…
Off-policy prediction -- learning the value function for one policy from data generated while following another policy -- is one of the most challenging subproblems in reinforcement learning. This paper presents empirical results with…