English
Related papers

Related papers: Best of Both Worlds Policy Optimization

200 papers

We study reinforcement learning with linear function approximation and adversarially changing cost functions, a setup that has mostly been considered under simplifying assumptions such as full information feedback or exploratory…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-31 Uri Sherman , Tomer Koren , Yishay Mansour

We demonstrate that, in the classical non-stochastic regret minimization problem with $d$ decisions, gains and losses to be respectively maximized or minimized are fundamentally different. Indeed, by considering the additional sparsity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-30 Joon Kwon , Vianney Perchet

Solving Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) is hard. Learning optimal controllers for POMDPs when the model is unknown is harder. Online learning of optimal controllers for unknown POMDPs, which requires efficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-16 Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Rahul Jain , Ashutosh Nayyar

We study the impact of predictions in online Linear Quadratic Regulator control with both stochastic and adversarial disturbances in the dynamics. In both settings, we characterize the optimal policy and derive tight bounds on the minimum…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-01-11 Chenkai Yu , Guanya Shi , Soon-Jo Chung , Yisong Yue , Adam Wierman

Reinforcement learning generalizes multi-armed bandit problems with additional difficulties of a longer planning horizon and unknown transition kernel. We explore a black-box reduction from discounted infinite-horizon tabular reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Ian A. Kash , Lev Reyzin , Zishun Yu

As one of the most popular methods in the field of reinforcement learning, Q-learning has received increasing attention. Recently, there have been more theoretical works on the regret bound of algorithms that belong to the Q-learning class…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-05 Zehao Dou , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Simon S. Du

We present an efficient algorithm for linear contextual bandits with adversarial losses and stochastic action sets. Our approach reduces this setting to misspecification-robust adversarial linear bandits with fixed action sets. Without…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Tim van Erven , Jack Mayo , Julia Olkhovskaya , Chen-Yu Wei

This paper is devoted to the extension of the regret lower bound beyond ergodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the problem dependent setting. While the regret lower bound for ergodic MDPs is well-known and reached by tractable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-23 Victor Boone , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-29 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

We study repeated two-player games where one of the players, the learner, employs a no-regret learning strategy, while the other, the optimizer, is a rational utility maximizer. We consider general Bayesian games, where the payoffs of both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-19 Yishay Mansour , Mehryar Mohri , Jon Schneider , Balasubramanian Sivan

Hybrid Reinforcement Learning (RL), where an agent learns from both an offline dataset and online explorations in an unknown environment, has garnered significant recent interest. A crucial question posed by Xie et al. (2022) is whether…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-08-09 Kevin Tan , Wei Fan , Yuting Wei

We design differentially private algorithms for the problem of prediction with expert advice under dynamic regret, also known as tracking the best expert. Our work addresses three natural types of adversaries, stochastic with shifting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-14 Aadirupa Saha , Vinod Raman , Hilal Asi

In the convex optimization approach to online regret minimization, many methods have been developed to guarantee a $O(\sqrt{T})$ bound on regret for subdifferentiable convex loss functions with bounded subgradients, by using a reduction to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-09-20 Arthur Flajolet , Patrick Jaillet

We design and analyze minimax-optimal algorithms for online linear optimization games where the player's choice is unconstrained. The player strives to minimize regret, the difference between his loss and the loss of a post-hoc benchmark…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-02-12 H. Brendan McMahan

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

We develop a new approach to obtaining high probability regret bounds for online learning with bandit feedback against an adaptive adversary. While existing approaches all require carefully constructing optimistic and biased loss…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-02 Chung-Wei Lee , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Mengxiao Zhang

Multi-dueling bandits, where a learner selects $m \geq 2$ arms per round and observes only the winner, arise naturally in many applications including ranking and recommendation systems, yet a fundamental question has remained open: can a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-19 S Akash , Pratik Gajane , Jawar Singh

We study reinforcement learning for episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) whose transitions are modelled by a multinomial logistic (MNL) model. Existing algorithms for MNL mixture MDPs yield a regret of $\smash{\tilde{O}(dH^2\sqrt{T})}$…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Pierre Boudart , Pierre Gaillard , Alessandro Rudi

Bilateral trade models the task of intermediating between two strategic agents, a seller and a buyer, willing to trade a good for which they hold private valuations. We study this problem from the perspective of a broker, in a regret…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Simone Di Gregorio , Paul Dütting , Federico Fusco , Chris Schwiegelshohn

We initiate the study of learning in contextual bandits with the help of loss predictors. The main question we address is whether one can improve over the minimax regret $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T})$ for learning over $T$ rounds, when the total…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-16 Chen-Yu Wei , Haipeng Luo , Alekh Agarwal