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We study the sample complexity of the plug-in approach for learning $\varepsilon$-optimal policies in average-reward Markov decision processes (MDPs) with a generative model. The plug-in approach constructs a model estimate then computes an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-12 Matthew Zurek , Yudong Chen

We study the problem of reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted linear Markov decision processes (MDPs), and propose the first computationally efficient algorithm achieving rate-optimal regret guarantees in this setting. Our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Antoine Moulin , Gergely Neu , Luca Viano

To overcome the curses of dimensionality and modeling of Dynamic Programming (DP) methods to solve Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods are adopted in practice. Contrary to traditional RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-24 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as an efficient method of choice for solving complex sequential decision making problems in automatic control, computer science, economics, and biology. In this paper we present a model-free RL…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-09-13 Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Yiannis Kantaros , Alessandro Abate , Daniel Kroening , George J. Pappas , Insup Lee

We present a model-free reinforcement learning algorithm to find an optimal policy for a finite-horizon Markov decision process while guaranteeing a desired lower bound on the probability of satisfying a signal temporal logic (STL)…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-09-29 Krishna C. Kalagarla , Rahul Jain , Pierluigi Nuzzo

Designing sample-efficient and computationally feasible reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms is particularly challenging in environments with large or infinite state and action spaces. In this paper, we advance this effort by presenting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Zakaria Mhammedi

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

A recent goal in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework is to choose a sequence of actions or a policy to maximize the reward collected or minimize the regret incurred in a finite time horizon. For several RL problems in operation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-18 K J Prabuchandran , Tejas Bodas , Theja Tulabandhula

A central issue lying at the heart of online reinforcement learning (RL) is data efficiency. While a number of recent works achieved asymptotically minimal regret in online RL, the optimality of these results is only guaranteed in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-30 Zihan Zhang , Yuxin Chen , Jason D. Lee , Simon S. Du

We study reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation where the underlying transition probability kernel of the Markov decision process (MDP) is a linear mixture model (Jia et al., 2020; Ayoub et al., 2020; Zhou et al.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-08 Dongruo Zhou , Quanquan Gu , Csaba Szepesvari

Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Sourav Ganguly , Kishan Panaganti , Arnob Ghosh , Adam Wierman

We study the computational complexity of the infinite-horizon discounted-reward Markov Decision Problem (MDP) with a finite state space $|\mathcal{S}|$ and a finite action space $|\mathcal{A}|$. We show that any randomized algorithm needs a…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-05-24 Yichen Chen , Mengdi Wang

The theory of reinforcement learning has focused on two fundamental problems: achieving low regret, and identifying $\epsilon$-optimal policies. While a simple reduction allows one to apply a low-regret algorithm to obtain an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Andrew Wagenmaker , Max Simchowitz , Kevin Jamieson

We consider episodic reinforcement learning in reward-mixing Markov decision processes (RMMDPs): at the beginning of every episode nature randomly picks a latent reward model among $M$ candidates and an agent interacts with the MDP…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-07 Jeongyeol Kwon , Yonathan Efroni , Constantine Caramanis , Shie Mannor

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has gained substantial attention across diverse application domains and theoretical investigations. Existing literature on RL theory largely focuses on risk-neutral settings where the decision-maker learns to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Zhengqi Wu , Renyuan Xu

In contrast to the advances in characterizing the sample complexity for solving Markov decision processes (MDPs), the optimal statistical complexity for solving constrained MDPs (CMDPs) remains unknown. We resolve this question by providing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Sharan Vaswani , Lin F. Yang , Csaba Szepesvári

We consider model-free reinforcement learning for infinite-horizon discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a continuous state space and unknown transition kernel, when only a single sample path under an arbitrary policy of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-24 Devavrat Shah , Qiaomin Xie

Robust reinforcement learning (RL) under the average-reward criterion is essential for long-term decision-making, particularly when the environment may differ from its specification. However, a significant gap exists in understanding the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-26 Zachary Roch , Chi Zhang , George Atia , Yue Wang

Recent theoretical work studies sample-efficient reinforcement learning (RL) extensively in two settings: learning interactively in the environment (online RL), or learning from an offline dataset (offline RL). However, existing algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-14 Tengyang Xie , Nan Jiang , Huan Wang , Caiming Xiong , Yu Bai

Distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DR-RL) has recently gained significant attention as a principled approach that addresses discrepancies between training and testing environments. To balance robustness, conservatism, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Zhenghao Li , Shengbo Wang , Nian Si