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We study the exploration problem with approximate linear action-value functions in episodic reinforcement learning under the notion of low inherent Bellman error, a condition normally employed to show convergence of approximate value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-30 Andrea Zanette , Alessandro Lazaric , Mykel Kochenderfer , Emma Brunskill

This work considers the sample complexity of obtaining an $\varepsilon$-optimal policy in an average reward Markov Decision Process (AMDP), given access to a generative model (simulator). When the ground-truth MDP is weakly communicating,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-02 Jinghan Wang , Mengdi Wang , Lin F. Yang

We investigate the in-context learning capabilities of transformers for the $d$-dimensional mixture of linear regression model, providing theoretical insights into their existence, generalization bounds, and training dynamics. Specifically,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-02-11 Yanhao Jin , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Lifeng Lai

The curse of dimensionality is a widely known issue in reinforcement learning (RL). In the tabular setting where the state space $\mathcal{S}$ and the action space $\mathcal{A}$ are both finite, to obtain a nearly optimal policy with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-28 Bingyan Wang , Yuling Yan , Jianqing Fan

Representation learning is a powerful tool that enables learning over large multitudes of agents or domains by enforcing that all agents operate on a shared set of learned features. However, many robotics or controls applications that would…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-30 Bruce D. Lee , Leonardo F. Toso , Thomas T. Zhang , James Anderson , Nikolai Matni

Online machine learning systems need to adapt to domain shifts. Meanwhile, acquiring label at every timestep is expensive. We propose a surprisingly simple algorithm that adaptively balances its regret and its number of label queries in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Yining Chen , Haipeng Luo , Tengyu Ma , Chicheng Zhang

We study the optimal sample complexity in large-scale Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems with policy space generalization, i.e. the agent has a prior knowledge that the optimal policy lies in a known policy space. Existing results show…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-18 Wenlong Mou , Zheng Wen , Xi Chen

We study the sample complexity of learning an $\varepsilon$-optimal policy in an average-reward Markov decision process (MDP) under a generative model. For weakly communicating MDPs, we establish the complexity bound…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Matthew Zurek , Yudong Chen

We study offline reinforcement learning in average-reward MDPs, which presents increased challenges from the perspectives of distribution shift and non-uniform coverage, and has been relatively underexamined from a theoretical perspective.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Matthew Zurek , Guy Zamir , Yudong Chen

We consider undiscounted reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs) where both the reward functions and the state-transition probabilities may vary (gradually or abruptly) over time. For this problem setting, we propose an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-11 Pratik Gajane , Ronald Ortner , Peter Auer

We study reinforcement learning in MDPs whose transition function is stochastic at most steps but may behave adversarially at a fixed subset of $\Lambda$ steps per episode. This model captures environments that are stable except at a few…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Ofir Schlisselberg , Tal Lancewicki , Yishay Mansour

We develop several provably efficient model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for infinite-horizon average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We consider both online setting and the setting with access to a simulator. In the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-29 Zihan Zhang , Qiaomin Xie

An important step in the design of autonomous systems is to evaluate the probability that a failure will occur. In safety-critical domains, the failure probability is extremely small so that the evaluation of a policy through Monte Carlo…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-23 Anthony Corso , Kyu-Young Kim , Shubh Gupta , Grace Gao , Mykel J. Kochenderfer

Policy gradient methods are among the most effective methods in challenging reinforcement learning problems with large state and/or action spaces. However, little is known about even their most basic theoretical convergence properties,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-16 Alekh Agarwal , Sham M. Kakade , Jason D. Lee , Gaurav Mahajan

This paper addresses the challenge of solving Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) with $d > 1$ constraints when the transition dynamics are unknown, but samples can be drawn from a generative model. We propose a model-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Max Buckley , Konstantinos Papathanasiou , Andreas Spanopoulos

We study stochastic multi-armed bandits under simultaneous constraints on space and adaptivity: the learner interacts with the environment in $B$ batches and has only $W$ bits of persistent memory. Prior work shows that each constraint…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Ruiyuan Huang , Zicheng Lyu , Xiaoyi Zhu , Zengfeng Huang

We study tabular reinforcement learning problems with multiple steps of lookahead information. Before acting, the learner observes $\ell$ steps of future transition and reward realizations: the exact state the agent would reach and the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-16 Nadav Merlis

Long interaction histories are central to modern recommender systems, yet training with long sequences is often dismissed as impractical under realistic memory and latency budgets. This work demonstrates that it is not only practical but…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Sayak Chakrabarty , Souradip Pal

Deep Learning shows very good performance when trained on large labeled data sets. The problem of training a deep net on a few or one sample per class requires a different learning approach which can generalize to unseen classes using only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-08-23 Jinchao Liu , Stuart J. Gibson , Margarita Osadchy

We consider the problem of online learning in Linear Quadratic Control systems whose state transition and state-action transition matrices $A$ and $B$ may be initially unknown. We devise an online learning algorithm and provide guarantees…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-30 Yassir Jedra , Alexandre Proutiere