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We present the first finite time global convergence analysis of policy gradient in the context of infinite horizon average reward Markov decision processes (MDPs). Specifically, we focus on ergodic tabular MDPs with finite state and action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Navdeep Kumar , Yashaswini Murthy , Itai Shufaro , Kfir Y. Levy , R. Srikant , Shie Mannor

We address the problem of policy evaluation in discounted Markov decision processes, and provide instance-dependent guarantees on the $\ell_\infty$-error under a generative model. We establish both asymptotic and non-asymptotic versions of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-03-17 Koulik Khamaru , Ashwin Pananjady , Feng Ruan , Martin J. Wainwright , Michael I. Jordan

We consider infinite-horizon $\gamma$-discounted Markov Decision Processes, for which it is known that there exists a stationary optimal policy. We consider the algorithm Value Iteration and the sequence of policies $\pi_1,...,\pi_k$ it…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-04-02 Bruno Scherrer

We investigate the problem of best policy identification in discounted linear Markov Decision Processes in the fixed confidence setting under a generative model. We first derive an instance-specific lower bound on the expected number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-12 Jerome Taupin , Yassir Jedra , Alexandre Proutiere

The strategy of early stopping is a regularization technique based on choosing a stopping time for an iterative algorithm. Focusing on non-parametric regression in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space, we analyze the early stopping strategy…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-06-18 Garvesh Raskutti , Martin J. Wainwright , Bin Yu

We study reward-free reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation, where the agent works in two phases: (1) in the exploration phase, the agent interacts with the environment but cannot access the reward; and (2) in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Junkai Zhang , Weitong Zhang , Quanquan Gu

In this paper, we consider risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action spaces and unbounded cost under both finite and infinite planning horizons. Our optimality criterion is based on the recursive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-16 Nicole Bäuerle , Alexander Glauner

We consider the exploration-exploitation dilemma in finite-horizon reinforcement learning problems whose state-action space is endowed with a metric. We introduce Kernel-UCBVI, a model-based optimistic algorithm that leverages the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-25 Omar Darwiche Domingues , Pierre Ménard , Matteo Pirotta , Emilie Kaufmann , Michal Valko

We study optimal procedures for estimating a linear functional based on observational data. In many problems of this kind, a widely used assumption is strict overlap, i.e., uniform boundedness of the importance ratio, which measures how…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-01-18 Wenlong Mou , Peng Ding , Martin J. Wainwright , Peter L. Bartlett

We present a novel distributionally robust framework for dynamic programming that uses kernel methods to design feedback control policies. Specifically, we leverage kernel mean embedding to map the transition probabilities governing the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-12-20 Licio Romao , Ashish R. Hota , Alessandro Abate

It is often said that control and estimation problems are in duality. Recently, in (Aubin-Frankowski,2021), we found new reproducing kernels in Linear-Quadratic optimal control by focusing on the Hilbert space of controlled trajectories,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-14 Pierre-Cyril Aubin-Frankowski , Alain Bensoussan

We present the first optimal rates for infinite-dimensional vector-valued ridge regression on a continuous scale of norms that interpolate between $L_2$ and the hypothesis space, which we consider as a vector-valued reproducing kernel…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-08-07 Zhu Li , Dimitri Meunier , Mattes Mollenhauer , Arthur Gretton

This paper is concerned with the problem of policy evaluation with linear function approximation in discounted infinite horizon Markov decision processes. We investigate the sample complexities required to guarantee a predefined estimation…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-03 Gen Li , Weichen Wu , Yuejie Chi , Cong Ma , Alessandro Rinaldo , Yuting Wei

We present the first finite-sample analysis of policy evaluation in robust average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Prior work in this setting have established only asymptotic convergence guarantees, leaving open the question of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-11 Yang Xu , Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

We study the problem of infinite-horizon average-reward reinforcement learning with linear Markov decision processes (MDPs). The associated Bellman operator of the problem not being a contraction makes the algorithm design challenging.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-12 Kihyuk Hong , Woojin Chae , Yufan Zhang , Dabeen Lee , Ambuj Tewari

In this paper, we consider the nonparametric least square regression in a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS). We propose a new randomized algorithm that has optimal generalization error bounds with respect to the square loss, closing a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-28 Kwang-Sung Jun , Ashok Cutkosky , Francesco Orabona

We present a method to find an optimal policy with respect to a reward function for a discounted Markov decision process under general linear temporal logic (LTL) specifications. Previous work has either focused on maximizing a cumulative…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-03-24 Krishna C. Kalagarla , Rahul Jain , Pierluigi Nuzzo

We study the policy evaluation problem in multi-agent reinforcement learning, modeled by a Markov decision process. In this problem, the agents operate in a common environment under a fixed control policy, working together to discover the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-01-13 Thinh T. Doan , Siva Theja Maguluri , Justin Romberg

Inverse reinforcement learning aims to infer the reward function that explains expert behavior observed through trajectories of state--action pairs. A long-standing difficulty in classical IRL is the non-uniqueness of the recovered reward:…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-09 Denis Belomestny , Alexey Naumov , Sergey Samsonov

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