Related papers: n-Step Temporal Difference Learning with Optimal n
In this paper, we revisit \textsf{ROOT-SGD}, an innovative method for stochastic optimization to bridge the gap between stochastic optimization and statistical efficiency. The proposed method enhances the performance and reliability of…
Under mild assumptions stochastic gradient methods asymptotically achieve an optimal rate of convergence if the arithmetic mean of all iterates is returned as an approximate optimal solution. However, in the absence of stochastic noise, the…
This paper concerns quasi-stochastic approximation (QSA) to solve root finding problems commonly found in applications to optimization and reinforcement learning. The general constant gain algorithm may be expressed as the…
The delta-bar-delta algorithm is recognized as a learning rate adaptation technique that enhances the convergence speed of the training process in optimization by dynamically scheduling the learning rate based on the difference between the…
In this work (Part I), we study three time-discretization procedures of the Dynamical Low-Rank Approximation (DLRA) of high-dimensional stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Specifically, we consider the Dynamically Orthogonal (DO)…
Motivated by the widespread use of temporal-difference (TD-) and Q-learning algorithms in reinforcement learning, this paper studies a class of biased stochastic approximation (SA) procedures under a mild "ergodic-like" assumption on the…
Theory and application of stochastic approximation (SA) have become increasingly relevant due in part to applications in optimization and reinforcement learning. This paper takes a new look at SA with constant step-size $\alpha>0$, defined…
Minimax optimal convergence rates for classes of stochastic convex optimization problems are well characterized, where the majority of results utilize iterate averaged stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with polynomially decaying step sizes.…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a widely adopted iterative method for optimizing differentiable objective functions. In this paper, we propose and discuss a novel approach to scale up SGD in applications involving non-convex functions…
Two-time-scale stochastic approximation (SA) is an algorithm with coupled iterations which has found broad applications in reinforcement learning, optimization and game control. In this work, we derive mean squared error bounds for…
The average reward is a fundamental performance metric in reinforcement learning (RL) focusing on the long-run performance of an agent. Differential temporal difference (TD) learning algorithms are a major advance for average reward RL as…
We consider stochastic algorithms derived from methods for solving deterministic optimization problems, especially comparison-based algorithms derived from stochastic approximation algorithms with a constant step-size. We develop a…
We study stochastic approximation algorithms with Markovian noise and constant step-size $\alpha$. We develop a method based on infinitesimal generator comparisons to study the bias of the algorithm, which is the expected difference between…
We consider learning problems over training sets in which both, the number of training examples and the dimension of the feature vectors, are large. To solve these problems we propose the random parallel stochastic algorithm (RAPSA). We…
Unifying seemingly disparate algorithmic ideas to produce better performing algorithms has been a longstanding goal in reinforcement learning. As a primary example, TD($\lambda$) elegantly unifies one-step TD prediction with Monte Carlo…
Time series averaging in dynamic time warping (DTW) spaces has been successfully applied to improve pattern recognition systems. This article proposes and analyzes subgradient methods for the problem of finding a sample mean in DTW spaces.…
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a simple and popular method to solve stochastic optimization problems which arise in machine learning. For strongly convex problems, its convergence rate was known to be O(\log(T)/T), by running SGD for…
The training of deep neural networks is inherently a nonconvex optimization problem, yet standard approaches such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD) require simultaneous updates to all parameters, often leading to unstable convergence and…
Given a dataset on actions and resulting long-term rewards, a direct estimation approach fits value functions that minimize prediction error on the training data. Temporal difference learning (TD) methods instead fit value functions by…
The Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm is of key importance for inference in latent variable models including mixture of regressors and experts, missing observations. This paper introduces a novel EM algorithm, called…