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Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) are used for applications of dynamic optimization in uncertain environments and have been studied extensively. Many of the main properties and algorithms of MDPs, such as value iteration and policy…
Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) is a powerful framework used to address a wide range of NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, often solved by Branch and Bound (B&B). A key factor influencing the performance of B&B solvers is…
Sharpe ratio (also known as reward-to-variability ratio) is a widely-used metric in finance, which measures the additional return at the cost of per unit of increased risk (standard deviation of return). However, the optimization of Sharpe…
We consider risk-sensitive Markov decision processes (MDPs), where the MDP model is influenced by a parameter which takes values in a compact metric space. We identify sufficient conditions under which small perturbations in the model…
Safety in stochastic control systems, which are subject to random noise with a known probability distribution, aims to compute policies that satisfy predefined operational constraints with high confidence throughout the uncertain evolution…
We present a unified framework based on primal-dual stochastic mirror descent for approximately solving infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) given a generative model. When applied to an average-reward MDP with $A_{tot}$ total…
We consider the problem of designing a control policy for an infinite-horizon discounted cost Markov decision process $\mathcal{M}$ when we only have access to an approximate model $\hat{\mathcal{M}}$. How well does an optimal policy…
In this paper, we give a new approximate dynamic programming (ADP) method to solve large-scale Markov decision programming (MDP) problem. In comparison with many classic ADP methods which have large number of constraints, we formulate an…
The canonical solution methodology for finite constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the objective is to maximize the expected infinite-horizon discounted rewards subject to the expected infinite-horizon discounted costs…
We develop a new Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) method for infinite horizon discounted reward Markov Decision Processes (MDP) based on projection onto a subsemimodule. We approximate the value function in terms of a $(\min,+)$ linear…
This paper addresses a key limitation in existing counterfactual inference methods for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Current approaches assume a specific causal model to make counterfactuals identifiable. However, there are usually many…
In this paper, we show how a simulated Markov decision process (MDP) built by the so-called \emph{baseline} policies, can be used to compute a different policy, namely the \emph{simulated optimal} policy, for which the performance of this…
We introduce disciplined biconvex programming (DBCP), a modeling framework for specifying and solving biconvex optimization problems. Biconvex optimization problems arise in various applications, including machine learning, signal…
Semidefinite programming is an indispensable tool in computer vision, but general-purpose solvers for semidefinite programs are often too slow and memory intensive for large-scale problems. We propose a general framework to approximately…
In this paper, we consider the finite-state approximation of a discrete-time constrained Markov decision process (MDP) under the discounted and average cost criteria. Using the linear programming formulation of the constrained discounted…
Risk-averse multistage stochastic programs appear in multiple areas and are challenging to solve. Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming (SDDP) is a well-known tool to address such problems under time-independence assumptions. We show how to…
We present a general framework for applying learning algorithms and heuristical guidance to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of our techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive…
We study infinite-horizon Discounted Markov Decision Processes (DMDPs) under a generative model. Motivated by the Algorithm with Advice framework Mitzenmacher and Vassilvitskii 2022, we propose a novel framework to investigate how a…
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…
In this paper, we consider a class of difference-of-convex (DC) optimization problems, which require only a weaker restricted $L$-smooth adaptable property on the smooth part of the objective function, instead of the standard global…