English
Related papers

Related papers: A Generalized Projected Bellman Error for Off-poli…

200 papers

Offline policy evaluation (OPE) is considered a fundamental and challenging problem in reinforcement learning (RL). This paper focuses on the value estimation of a target policy based on pre-collected data generated from a possibly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-13 Jiayi Wang , Zhengling Qi , Raymond K. W. Wong

Fast-converging algorithms are a contemporary requirement in reinforcement learning. In the context of linear function approximation, the magnitude of the smallest eigenvalue of the key matrix is a major factor reflecting the convergence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Xingguo Chen , Yu Gong , Shangdong Yang , Wenhao Wang

Offline reinforcement learning promises policy improvement from logged interaction data alone, yet state-of-the-art algorithms remain vulnerable to value over-estimation and to violations of domain knowledge such as monotonicity or…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-06-18 Ali Baheri

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms still suffer from high sample complexity despite outstanding recent successes. The need for intensive interactions with the environment is especially observed in many widely popular policy gradient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-04 Samuele Tosatto , Joao Carvalho , Hany Abdulsamad , Jan Peters

Large scale reinforcement learning has become a central tool for improving reasoning in large language models. At this scale, generation is often lagged or asynchronous, so updates are performed on data collected by older policies. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Otmane Sakhi , Aleksei Arzhantsev , Imad Aouali , Flavian Vasile

We study representation learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL), focusing on the important task of Offline Policy Evaluation (OPE). Recent work shows that, in contrast to supervised learning, realizability of the Q-function is not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Jonathan D. Chang , Kaiwen Wang , Nathan Kallus , Wen Sun

Existing value function approximation methods have been successfully used in many applications, but they often lack useful a priori error bounds. We propose a new approximate bilinear programming formulation of value function approximation,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2010-06-15 Marek Petrik , Shlomo Zilberstein

We propose and analyze a reinforcement learning principle that approximates the Bellman equations by enforcing their validity only along an user-defined space of test functions. Focusing on applications to model-free offline RL with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-13 Andrea Zanette , Martin J. Wainwright

Most value function learning algorithms in reinforcement learning are based on the mean squared (projected) Bellman error. However, squared errors are known to be sensitive to outliers, both skewing the solution of the objective and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-19 Andrew Patterson , Victor Liao , Martha White

We study reinforcement learning methods with linear function approximation under non-Markov state and cost processes. We first consider the policy evaluation method and show that the algorithm converges under suitable ergodicity conditions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-05 Ali Devran Kara

We study the problem of off-policy evaluation (OPE) in Reinforcement Learning (RL), where the aim is to estimate the performance of a new policy given historical data that may have been generated by a different policy, or policies. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-16 Aurélien F. Bibaut , Ivana Malenica , Nikos Vlassis , Mark J. van der Laan

One of the most natural approaches to reinforcement learning (RL) with function approximation is value iteration, which inductively generates approximations to the optimal value function by solving a sequence of regression problems. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Noah Golowich , Ankur Moitra

With the increasing need for handling large state and action spaces, general function approximation has become a key technique in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, we propose a general framework that unifies model-based and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-03 Zixiang Chen , Chris Junchi Li , Angela Yuan , Quanquan Gu , Michael I. Jordan

Off-policy Reinforcement Learning (RL) holds the promise of better data efficiency as it allows sample reuse and potentially enables safe interaction with the environment. Current off-policy policy gradient methods either suffer from high…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-09 Samuele Tosatto , João Carvalho , Jan Peters

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has proven effective in solving complex decision-making tasks across various domains, but challenges remain in continuous-time settings, particularly when state dynamics are governed by stochastic differential…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-19 Chenyang Jiang , Donggyu Kim , Alejandra Quintos , Yazhen Wang

In traditional statistical learning, data points are usually assumed to be independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.) following an unknown probability distribution. This paper presents a contrasting viewpoint, perceiving data points…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-19 Yangchen Pan , Junfeng Wen , Chenjun Xiao , Philip Torr

Off-policy evaluation (OPE) is the task of estimating the expected reward of a given policy based on offline data previously collected under different policies. Therefore, OPE is a key step in applying reinforcement learning to real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-11 Yihao Feng , Ziyang Tang , Na Zhang , Qiang Liu

Reinforcement Learning algorithms designed for high-dimensional spaces often enforce the Bellman equation on a sampled subset of states, relying on generalization to propagate knowledge across the state space. In this paper, we identify and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-18 Brieuc Pinon , Raphaël Jungers , Jean-Charles Delvenne

While reinforcement learning algorithms provide automated acquisition of optimal policies, practical application of such methods requires a number of design decisions, such as manually designing reward functions that not only define the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-29 Tim G. J. Rudner , Vitchyr H. Pong , Rowan McAllister , Yarin Gal , Sergey Levine

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has shown remarkable success in specific offline decision-making scenarios, yet its theoretical guarantees are still under development. Existing works on offline RL theory primarily emphasize a few trivial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-20 Di Wu , Yuling Jiao , Li Shen , Haizhao Yang , Xiliang Lu