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Related papers: A General Framework for Sequential Decision-Making…

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Consider learning a policy purely on the basis of demonstrated behavior -- that is, with no access to reinforcement signals, no knowledge of transition dynamics, and no further interaction with the environment. This *strictly batch…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-01-15 Daniel Jarrett , Ioana Bica , Mihaela van der Schaar

We study regret minimization for infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under cost constraints. We start by designing a policy optimization algorithm with carefully designed action-value estimator and bonus term,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-02 Liyu Chen , Rahul Jain , Haipeng Luo

We propose a general framework for studying adaptive regret bounds in the online learning framework, including model selection bounds and data-dependent bounds. Given a data- or model-dependent bound we ask, "Does there exist some algorithm…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-14 Dylan J. Foster , Alexander Rakhlin , Karthik Sridharan

We present the first theoretical guarantees for differentially private online reinforcement learning (RL) with general function approximation, extending beyond prior work restricted to tabular and linear settings. Our approach combines a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Yi He , Xingyu Zhou

Resource-constrained classification tasks are common in real-world applications such as allocating tests for disease diagnosis, hiring decisions when filling a limited number of positions, and defect detection in manufacturing settings…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-22 Danit Shifman Abukasis , Izack Cohen , Xiaochen Xian , Kejun Huang , Gonen Singer

We study the problem of online learning and online regret minimization when samples are drawn from a general unknown non-stationary process. We introduce the concept of a dynamic changing process with cost $K$, where the conditional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-14 Changlong Wu , Ananth Grama , Wojciech Szpankowski

Online learning methods yield sequential regret bounds under minimal assumptions and provide in-expectation risk bounds for statistical learning. However, despite the apparent advantage of online guarantees over their statistical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-16 Dirk van der Hoeven , Nikita Zhivotovskiy , Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi

A basic model in sequential decision making is the Markov decision process (MDP), which is extended to Robust MDPs (RMDPs) by allowing uncertainty in transition probabilities and optimizing against the worst-case transition probabilities…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Ali Asadi , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Alipasha Montaseri , Ali Shafiee

Due to the drastic gap in complexity between sequential and batch statistical learning, recent work has studied a smoothed sequential learning setting, where Nature is constrained to select contexts with density bounded by 1/{\sigma} with…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-05-27 Adam Block , Max Simchowitz

In the optimization of dynamical systems, the variables typically have constraints. Such problems can be modeled as a constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). This paper considers a model-free approach to the problem, where the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-02 Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Aggarwal , Ather Gattami

The problem of reinforcement learning in an unknown and discrete Markov Decision Process (MDP) under the average-reward criterion is considered, when the learner interacts with the system in a single stream of observations, starting from an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-03-06 Mohammad Sadegh Talebi , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

We study the problem of dynamic batch learning in high-dimensional sparse linear contextual bandits, where a decision maker, under a given maximum-number-of-batch constraint and only able to observe rewards at the end of each batch, can…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-07-19 Zhimei Ren , Zhengyuan Zhou

We introduce learning and planning algorithms for average-reward MDPs, including 1) the first general proven-convergent off-policy model-free control algorithm without reference states, 2) the first proven-convergent off-policy model-free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-29 Yi Wan , Abhishek Naik , Richard S. Sutton

The analysis of Temporal Difference (TD) learning in the average-reward setting faces notable theoretical difficulties because the Bellman operator is not contractive with respect to any norm. This complicates standard analyses of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Haoxing Tian , Zaiwei Chen , Ioannis Ch. Paschalidis , Alex Olshevsky

We resolve the open question regarding the sample complexity of policy learning for maximizing the long-run average reward associated with a uniformly ergodic Markov decision process (MDP), assuming a generative model. In this context, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-14 Shengbo Wang , Jose Blanchet , Peter Glynn

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 present an efficient reinforcement learning algorithm that learns the optimal admission control policy in a partially observable queueing network. Specifically, only the arrival and departure times from the network are observable, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-07 Jonatha Anselmi , Bruno Gaujal , Louis-Sébastien Rebuffi

Obtaining first-order regret bounds -- regret bounds scaling not as the worst-case but with some measure of the performance of the optimal policy on a given instance -- is a core question in sequential decision-making. While such bounds…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-24 Andrew Wagenmaker , Yifang Chen , Max Simchowitz , Simon S. Du , Kevin Jamieson

The primary goal of my Ph.D. study is to develop provably efficient and practical algorithms for data-driven sequential decision-making under uncertainty. My work focuses on reinforcement learning (RL), multi-armed bandits, and their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-16 Zhiyong Wang

Real-world sequential decision making problems commonly involve partial observability, which requires the agent to maintain a memory of history in order to infer the latent states, plan and make good decisions. Coping with partial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-09 Yonathan Efroni , Chi Jin , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Sobhan Miryoosefi