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This paper establishes central limit theorems for Polyak-Ruppert averaged Q-learning under asynchronous updates. We prove a non-asymptotic central limit theorem, where the convergence rate in Wasserstein distance explicitly reflects the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Xingtu Liu

Algorithms for solving \textit{nonlinear} fixed-point equations -- such as average-reward \textit{$Q$-learning} and \textit{TD-learning} -- often involve semi-norm contractions. Achieving parameter-free optimal convergence rates for these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Ankur Naskar , Gugan Thoppe , Vijay Gupta

We consider the question of learning $Q$-function in a sample efficient manner for reinforcement learning with continuous state and action spaces under a generative model. If $Q$-function is Lipschitz continuous, then the minimal sample…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-12 Devavrat Shah , Dogyoon Song , Zhi Xu , Yuzhe Yang

Despite the sustained popularity of Q-learning as a practical tool for policy determination, a majority of relevant theoretical literature deals with either constant ($\eta_{t}\equiv \eta$) or polynomially decaying ($\eta_{t} = \eta…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-07 Soham Bonnerjee , Zhipeng Lou , Wei Biao Wu

In this paper, we derive rates of convergence in the high-dimensional central limit theorem for Polyak-Ruppert averaged iterates generated by the asynchronous Q-learning algorithm with a polynomial stepsize $k^{-\omega},\, \omega \in (1/2,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-09 Artemy Rubtsov , Sergey Samsonov , Vladimir Ulyanov , Alexey Naumov

We undertake a precise study of the asymptotic and non-asymptotic properties of stochastic approximation procedures with Polyak-Ruppert averaging for solving a linear system $\bar{A} \theta = \bar{b}$. When the matrix $\bar{A}$ is Hurwitz,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-04-10 Wenlong Mou , Chris Junchi Li , Martin J. Wainwright , Peter L. Bartlett , Michael I. Jordan

Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a key approach for training agents in complex and uncertain environments. Incorporating statistical inference in RL algorithms is essential for understanding and managing uncertainty in model…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-28 Saunak Kumar Panda , Ruiqi Liu , Yisha Xiang

In this paper, we derive rates of convergence in the high-dimensional central limit theorem for Polyak--Ruppert averaged iterates generated by entropy-regularized asynchronous Q-learning with linear function approximation and a polynomial…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-19 Artemy Rubtsov , Rahul Singh , Eric Moulines , Alexey Naumov , Sergey Samsonov

This paper presents the first non-asymptotic result showing that a model-free algorithm can achieve a logarithmic cumulative regret for episodic tabular reinforcement learning if there exists a strictly positive sub-optimality gap in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-24 Kunhe Yang , Lin F. Yang , Simon S. Du

We investigate the statistical properties of Temporal Difference (TD) learning with Polyak-Ruppert averaging, arguably one of the most widely used algorithms in reinforcement learning, for the task of estimating the parameters of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-25 Weichen Wu , Gen Li , Yuting Wei , Alessandro Rinaldo

Q-learning is known as one of the fundamental reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. Its convergence has been the focus of extensive research over the past several decades. Recently, a new finitetime error bound and analysis for Q-learning…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-01-17 Donghwna Lee

In spite of the large literature on reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), a complete theoretical understanding is still lacking. In a partially observable setting, the history of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-12 Erfan Seyedsalehi , Nima Akbarzadeh , Amit Sinha , Aditya Mahajan

The problem of sample complexity of online reinforcement learning is often studied in the literature without taking into account any partial knowledge about the system dynamics that could potentially accelerate the learning process. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Meshal Alharbi , Mardavij Roozbehani , Munther Dahleh

We study reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes with continuous state spaces, where data are generated online from a single trajectory under a Markovian behavior policy. To avoid maintaining an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Shengbo Wang

We present an argument based on the multidimensional and the uniform central limit theorems, proving that, under some geometrical assumptions between the target function $T$ and the learning class $F$, the excess risk of the empirical risk…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2011-02-25 Guillaume Lecué , Shahar Mendelson

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has witnessed a remarkable surge in interest, fueled by the empirical success achieved in applications of single-agent reinforcement learning (RL). In this study, we consider a distributed…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-07-30 Han-Dong Lim , Donghwan Lee

Reinforcement learning algorithms have been widely used for decision-making tasks in various domains. However, the performance of these algorithms can be impacted by high variance and instability, particularly in environments with noise or…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-31 Saunak Kumar Panda , Tong Li , Ruiqi Liu , Yisha Xiang

In this work, we present the first finite-time analysis of Q-learning with time-varying learning policies (i.e., on-policy sampling) for discounted Markov decision processes under minimal assumptions, requiring only the existence of a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Phalguni Nanda , Zaiwei Chen

In an episodic Markov Decision Process (MDP) problem, an online algorithm chooses from a set of actions in a sequence of $H$ trials, where $H$ is the episode length, in order to maximize the total payoff of the chosen actions. Q-learning,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-11 Xu Zhu

Various algorithms in reinforcement learning exhibit dramatic variability in their convergence rates and ultimate accuracy as a function of the problem structure. Such instance-specific behavior is not captured by existing global minimax…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-06-29 Koulik Khamaru , Eric Xia , Martin J. Wainwright , Michael I. Jordan
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