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We quantify the efficiency of temporal difference (TD) learning over the direct, or Monte Carlo (MC), estimator for policy evaluation in reinforcement learning, with an emphasis on estimation of quantities related to rare events. Policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-17 Xiaoou Cheng , Jonathan Weare

Temporal difference (TD) learning is a widely used method to evaluate policies in reinforcement learning. While many TD learning methods have been developed in recent years, little attention has been paid to preserving privacy and most of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-26 Canzhe Zhao , Yanjie Ze , Jing Dong , Baoxiang Wang , Shuai Li

Using insight from numerical approximation of ODEs and the problem formulation and solution methodology of TD learning through a Galerkin relaxation, I propose a new class of TD learning algorithms. After applying the improved numerical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-21 Caleb Bowyer

In this paper, we introduce proximal gradient temporal difference learning, which provides a principled way of designing and analyzing true stochastic gradient temporal difference learning algorithms. We show how gradient TD (GTD)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-09 Bo Liu , Ian Gemp , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Ji Liu , Sridhar Mahadevan , Marek Petrik

Linear TD($\lambda$) is one of the most fundamental reinforcement learning algorithms for policy evaluation. Previously, convergence rates are typically established under the assumption of linearly independent features, which does not hold…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-15 Zixuan Xie , Xinyu Liu , Rohan Chandra , Shangtong Zhang

Temporal difference (TD) learning is an important approach in reinforcement learning, as it combines ideas from dynamic programming and Monte Carlo methods in a way that allows for online and incremental model-free learning. A key idea of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-21 Kristopher De Asis , Brendan Bennett , Richard S. Sutton

Policy evaluation in reinforcement learning is often conducted using two-timescale stochastic approximation, which results in various gradient temporal difference methods such as GTD(0), GTD2, and TDC. Here, we provide convergence rate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-05 Gal Dalal , Balazs Szorenyi , Gugan Thoppe

Temporal difference (TD) learning is a policy evaluation in reinforcement learning whose performance can be enhanced by variance reduction methods. Recently, multiple works have sought to fuse TD learning with Stochastic Variance Reduced…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-07 Arsenii Mustafin , Alex Olshevsky , Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis

In this paper we introduce the idea of improving the performance of parametric temporal-difference (TD) learning algorithms by selectively emphasizing or de-emphasizing their updates on different time steps. In particular, we show that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-07-21 Richard S. Sutton , A. Rupam Mahmood , Martha White

A common optimization tool used in deep reinforcement learning is momentum, which consists in accumulating and discounting past gradients, reapplying them at each iteration. We argue that, unlike in supervised learning, momentum in Temporal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-09 Emmanuel Bengio , Joelle Pineau , Doina Precup

In this paper we present the first empirical study of the emphatic temporal-difference learning algorithm (ETD), comparing it with conventional temporal-difference learning, in particular, with linear TD(0), on on-policy and off-policy…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-05-15 Sina Ghiassian , Banafsheh Rafiee , Richard S. Sutton

This paper revisits the temporal difference (TD) learning algorithm for the policy evaluation tasks in reinforcement learning. Typically, the performance of TD(0) and TD($\lambda$) is very sensitive to the choice of stepsizes. Oftentimes,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-12 Tao Sun , Han Shen , Tianyi Chen , Dongsheng Li

We analyse quantile temporal-difference learning (QTD), a distributional reinforcement learning algorithm that has proven to be a key component in several successful large-scale applications of reinforcement learning. Despite these…

We are interested in understanding stability (almost sure boundedness) of stochastic approximation algorithms (SAs) driven by a `controlled Markov' process. Analyzing this class of algorithms is important, since many reinforcement learning…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-05-18 Arunselvan Ramaswamy , Shalabh Bhatnagar

We study the policy evaluation problem in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) over directed communication networks, where agents cooperate with each other to explore an unknown environment and accomplish a specific task. We propose a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-07 Haocheng Yang , Shengchao Zhao , Yongchao Liu

A common technique in reinforcement learning is to evaluate the value function from Monte Carlo simulations of a given policy, and use the estimated value function to obtain a new policy which is greedy with respect to the estimated value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-01 Anna Winnicki , R. Srikant

TD($\lambda$) in value-based MARL algorithms or the Temporal Difference critic learning in Actor-Critic-based (AC-based) algorithms synergistically integrate elements from Monte-Carlo simulation and Q function bootstrapping via dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Yue Deng , Zirui Wang , Yin Zhang

We study policy evaluation problems in multi-task reinforcement learning (RL) under a low-rank representation setting. In this setting, we are given $N$ learning tasks where the corresponding value function of these tasks lie in an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Yitao Bai , Sihan Zeng , Justin Romberg , Thinh T. Doan

In this paper we extend temporal difference policy evaluation algorithms to performance criteria that include the variance of the cumulative reward. Such criteria are useful for risk management, and are important in domains such as finance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-10-15 Aviv Tamar , Dotan Di Castro , Shie Mannor

We study the use of Temporal-Difference learning for estimating the structural parameters in dynamic discrete choice models. Our algorithms are based on the conditional choice probability approach but use functional approximations to…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-12-23 Karun Adusumilli , Dita Eckardt