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We consider the adversarial online multi-task reinforcement learning setting, where in each of $K$ episodes the learner is given an unknown task taken from a finite set of $M$ unknown finite-horizon MDP models. The learner's objective is to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-12 Quan Nguyen , Nishant A. Mehta

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

Motivated by practical applications where stable long-term performance is critical-such as robotics, operations research, and healthcare-we study the problem of distributionally robust (DR) average-reward reinforcement learning. We propose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Zijun Chen , Shengbo Wang , Nian Si

Sample complexity bounds are a common performance metric in the Reinforcement Learning literature. In the discounted cost, infinite horizon setting, all of the known bounds have a factor that is a polynomial in $1/(1-\gamma)$, where $\gamma…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-09 Adithya M. Devraj , Sean P. Meyn

We consider discounted infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the goal is to find an optimal policy that maximizes the expected cumulative reward while satisfying expected cumulative constraints. Motivated by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Tingting Ni , Maryam Kamgarpour

We derive and analyze learning algorithms for apprenticeship learning, policy evaluation, and policy gradient for average reward criteria. Existing algorithms explicitly require an upper bound on the mixing time. In contrast, we build on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Tom Zahavy , Alon Cohen , Haim Kaplan , Yishay Mansour

Any reinforcement learning algorithm that applies to all Markov decision processes (MDPs) will suffer $\Omega(\sqrt{SAT})$ regret on some MDP, where $T$ is the elapsed time and $S$ and $A$ are the cardinalities of the state and action…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-11-04 Ian Osband , Benjamin Van Roy

We extend the Longstaff-Schwartz algorithm for approximately solving optimal stopping problems on high-dimensional state spaces. We reformulate the optimal stopping problem for Markov processes in discrete time as a generalized statistical…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Daniel Egloff

This paper studies discrete-time average-cost infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with Borel state and action sets. It introduces new sufficient conditions for { the} validity of optimality inequalities and optimality…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-28 Eugene A. Feinberg , Pavlo O. Kasyanov , Liliia S. Paliichuk

We consider online learning for minimizing regret in unknown, episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) with continuous states and actions. We develop variants of the UCRL and posterior sampling algorithms that employ nonparametric Gaussian…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-04 Sayak Ray Chowdhury , Aditya Gopalan

We introduce a framework for approximate analysis of Markov decision processes (MDP) with bounded-, unbounded-, and infinite-horizon properties. The main idea is to identify a "core" of an MDP, i.e., a subsystem where we provably remain…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-06-22 Jan Křetínský , Tobias Meggendorfer

We consider the problem of online reinforcement learning for the Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem modeled as an unknown MDP with an absorbing state. We propose PSRL-SSP, a simple posterior sampling-based reinforcement learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-11 Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Liyu Chen , Rahul Jain , Haipeng Luo

The Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) formulation allows to solve safety-critical decision making tasks that are subject to constraints. While CMDPs have been extensively studied in the Reinforcement Learning literature, little…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Dinesh Parthasarathy , Georgios Kontes , Axel Plinge , Christopher Mutschler

Canonical models of Markov decision processes (MDPs) usually consider geometric discounting based on a constant discount factor. While this standard modeling approach has led to many elegant results, some recent studies indicate the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-07-21 Jiarui Gan , Annika Hennes , Rupak Majumdar , Debmalya Mandal , Goran Radanovic

Solving general Markov decision processes (MDPs) is a computationally hard problem. Solving finite-horizon MDPs, on the other hand, is highly tractable with well known polynomial-time algorithms. What drives this extreme disparity, and do…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-05-17 Thomas Spooner , Rui Silva , Joshua Lockhart , Jason Long , Vacslav Glukhov

The average cost optimality is known to be a challenging problem for partially observable stochastic control, with few results available beyond the finite state, action, and measurement setup, for which somewhat restrictive conditions are…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-08-01 Yunus Emre Demirci , Ali Devran Kara , Serdar Yüksel

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

This paper proposes a computationally tractable algorithm for learning infinite-horizon average-reward linear Markov decision processes (MDPs) and linear mixture MDPs under the Bellman optimality condition. While guaranteeing computational…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-25 Woojin Chae , Dabeen Lee

This paper investigates goal-oriented communication for remote estimation of multiple Markov sources in resource-constrained networks. An agent decides the updating times of the sources and transmits the packet to a remote destination over…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-06-04 Jiping Luo , Nikolaos Pappas

We use the Reward Biased Maximum Likelihood Estimation (RBMLE) algorithm to learn optimal policies for constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs). We analyze the learning regrets of RBMLE.

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-05-31 Rahul Singh