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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…
We present a novel algorithm that efficiently computes near-optimal deterministic policies for constrained reinforcement learning (CRL) problems. Our approach combines three key ideas: (1) value-demand augmentation, (2) action-space…
The optimization of expensive-to-evaluate black-box functions over combinatorial structures is an ubiquitous task in machine learning, engineering and the natural sciences. The combinatorial explosion of the search space and costly…
Recently, Frazier et al. proposed a natural model for crowdsourced exploration of different a priori unknown options: a principal is interested in the long-term welfare of a population of agents who arrive one by one in a multi-armed bandit…
We consider the SUBSET SUM problem and its important variants in this paper. In the SUBSET SUM problem, a (multi-)set $X$ of $n$ positive numbers and a target number $t$ are given, and the task is to find a subset of $X$ with the maximal…
This work introduces a novel blackbox optimization algorithm for computationally expensive constrained multi-fidelity problems. When applying a direct search method to such problems, the scarcity of feasible points may lead to numerous…
We consider a periodic-review, fixed-lifetime perishable inventory control problem where demand is a general stochastic process. The optimal solution for this problem is intractable due to "curse of dimensionality". In this paper, we first…
Solving nonlinear optimal control problems is a challenging task, particularly for high-dimensional problems. We propose algorithms for model-based policy iterations to solve nonlinear optimal control problems with convergence guarantees.…
We present a simple $O(n^4)$-time algorithm for computing optimal search trees with two-way comparisons. The only previous solution to this problem, by Anderson et al., has the same running time, but is significantly more complicated and is…
We revisit various PTAS's (Polynomial Time Approximation Schemes) for minimization versions of dense problems, and show that they can be performed with sublinear query complexity. This means that not only do we obtain a…
We give an $\alpha(1+\epsilon)$-approximation algorithm for solving covering LPs, assuming the presence of a $(1/\alpha)$-approximation algorithm for a certain optimization problem. Our algorithm is based on a simple modification of the…
We consider the Stochastic Boolean Function Evaluation (SBFE) problem in the well-studied case of $k$-of-$n$ functions: There are independent Boolean random variables $x_1,\dots,x_n$ where each variable $i$ has a known probability $p_i$ of…
Motivated by applications where impatience is pervasive and evaluation times are uncertain, we study a selection model where options may expire at an unknown point in time and evaluation times are stochastic. Initially, the decision-maker…
We study the complexity of problems solvable in deterministic polynomial time with access to an NP or Quantum Merlin-Arthur (QMA)-oracle, such as $P^{NP}$ and $P^{QMA}$, respectively. The former allows one to classify problems more finely…
We consider the problem of finding the best memoryless stochastic policy for an infinite-horizon partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) with finite state and action spaces with respect to either the discounted or mean reward…
Inverse reinforcement learning is the problem of inferring a reward function from an optimal policy or demonstrations by an expert. In this work, it is assumed that the reward is expressed as a reward machine whose transitions depend on…
Many researchers in artificial intelligence are beginning to explore the use of soft constraints to express a set of (possibly conflicting) problem requirements. A soft constraint is a function defined on a collection of variables which…
We study the problem of sorting under incomplete information, when queries are used to resolve uncertainties. Each of $n$ data items has an unknown value, which is known to lie in a given interval. We can pay a query cost to learn the…
In this work, we study the discrete logarithm problem in the context of TFNP - the complexity class of search problems with a syntactically guaranteed existence of a solution for all instances. Our main results establish that suitable…
We study the d-dimensional hypercube knapsack problem where we are given a set of d-dimensional hypercubes with associated profits, and a knapsack which is a unit d-dimensional hypercube. The goal is to find an axis-aligned non-overlapping…