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Related papers: Regret Bounds for Risk-sensitive Reinforcement Lea…

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The performance of online convex optimization algorithms in a dynamic environment is often expressed in terms of the dynamic regret, which measures the decision maker's performance against a sequence of time-varying comparators. In the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-28 Nima Eshraghi , Ben Liang

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL), a crucial field due to its ability to enhance decision-making in scenarios where it is essential to manage uncertainty and minimize potential adverse outcomes. Particularly, our work…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-11 Dake Zhang , Boxiang Lyu , Shuang Qiu , Mladen Kolar , Tong Zhang

We address the problem of learning to control an unknown nonlinear dynamical system through sequential interactions. Motivated by high-stakes applications in which mistakes can be catastrophic, such as robotics and healthcare, we study…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-14 James Wang , Bruce D. Lee , Ingvar Ziemann , Nikolai Matni

In this work, we propose a framework to learn feedback control policies with guarantees on closed-loop generalization and adversarial robustness. These policies are learned directly from expert demonstrations, contained in a dataset of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-03 Abed AlRahman Al Makdah , Vishaal Krishnan , Fabio Pasqualetti

We derive a novel asymptotic problem-dependent lower-bound for regret minimization in finite-horizon tabular Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). While, similar to prior work (e.g., for ergodic MDPs), the lower-bound is the solution to an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-25 Andrea Tirinzoni , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric

We present an algorithm based on the \emph{Optimism in the Face of Uncertainty} (OFU) principle which is able to learn Reinforcement Learning (RL) modeled by Markov decision process (MDP) with finite state-action space efficiently. By…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Zihan Zhang , Xiangyang Ji

Achieving sample efficiency in online episodic reinforcement learning (RL) requires optimally balancing exploration and exploitation. When it comes to a finite-horizon episodic Markov decision process with $S$ states, $A$ actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Gen Li , Laixi Shi , Yuxin Chen , Yuejie Chi

We provide an algorithm that achieves the optimal regret rate in an unknown weakly communicating Markov Decision Process (MDP). The algorithm proceeds in episodes where, in each episode, it picks a policy using regularization based on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-05-14 Peter L. Bartlett , Ambuj Tewari

This paper studies performative risk minimization, a formulation of stochastic optimization under decision-dependent distributions. We consider the general case where the performative risk can be non-convex, for which we develop efficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-26 Sungwoo Park , Junyeop Kwon , Byeongnoh Kim , Suhyun Chae , Jeeyong Lee , Dabeen Lee

We present a new algorithm based on posterior sampling for learning in Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDP) in the infinite-horizon undiscounted setting. The algorithm achieves near-optimal regret bounds while being advantageous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-30 Danil Provodin , Maurits Kaptein , Mykola Pechenizkiy

We introduce the technique of adaptive discretization to design an efficient model-based episodic reinforcement learning algorithm in large (potentially continuous) state-action spaces. Our algorithm is based on optimistic one-step value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-26 Sean R. Sinclair , Tianyu Wang , Gauri Jain , Siddhartha Banerjee , Christina Lee Yu

In a reinforcement learning (RL) setting, the agent's optimal strategy heavily depends on her risk preferences and the underlying model dynamics of the training environment. These two aspects influence the agent's ability to make…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Anthony Coache , Sebastian Jaimungal

We consider learning in an adversarial Markov Decision Process (MDP) where the loss functions can change arbitrarily over $K$ episodes and the state space can be arbitrarily large. We assume that the Q-function of any policy is linear in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-05 Yan Dai , Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Julian Zimmert

We present an optimisation-based method for synthesising a dynamic regret optimal controller for linear systems with potentially adversarial disturbances and known or adversarial initial conditions. The dynamic regret is defined as the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-05-31 Alexandre Didier , Jerome Sieber , Melanie N. Zeilinger

We study the Lipschitz bandit problem, where a learner sequentially maximizes an unknown Lipschitz function $f$ over a domain $\mathcal{X} \subset [0,1]^d$ using noisy pointwise evaluations. Existing regret bounds are either worst-case,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-29 Marius Potfer , Vianney Perchet

This work introduces the first small-loss and gradual-variation regret bounds for online portfolio selection, marking the first instances of data-dependent bounds for online convex optimization with non-Lipschitz, non-smooth losses. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-07 Chung-En Tsai , Ying-Ting Lin , Yen-Huan Li

This paper studies regret minimization with randomized value functions in reinforcement learning. In tabular finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes, we introduce a clipping variant of one classical Thompson Sampling (TS)-like algorithm,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-10 Priyank Agrawal , Jinglin Chen , Nan Jiang

Deep reinforcement learning has achieved impressive successes yet often requires a very large amount of interaction data. This result is perhaps unsurprising, as using complicated function approximation often requires more data to fit, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-20 Jonathan N. Lee , Aldo Pacchiano , Vidya Muthukumar , Weihao Kong , Emma Brunskill

We use the lens of weak signal asymptotics to study a class of sequentially randomized experiments, including those that arise in solving multi-armed bandit problems. In an experiment with $n$ time steps, we let the mean reward gaps between…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-06-26 Xu Kuang , Stefan Wager

In practical applications, data is used to make decisions in two steps: estimation and optimization. First, a machine learning model estimates parameters for a structural model relating decisions to outcomes. Second, a decision is chosen to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-28 Samuel Tan , Peter I. Frazier