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Q-learning is a regression-based approach that is widely used to formalize the development of an optimal dynamic treatment strategy. Finite dimensional working models are typically used to estimate certain nuisance parameters, and…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-03-30 Ashkan Ertefaie , James R. McKay , David Oslin , Robert L. Strawderman

This paper studies the robustness of reinforcement learning algorithms to errors in the learning process. Specifically, we revisit the benchmark problem of discrete-time linear quadratic regulation (LQR) and study the long-standing open…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-16 Bo Pang , Zhong-Ping Jiang

Convex Q-learning is a recent approach to reinforcement learning, motivated by the possibility of a firmer theory for convergence, and the possibility of making use of greater a priori knowledge regarding policy or value function structure.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-18 Fan Lu , Joel Mathias , Sean Meyn , Karanjit Kalsi

Dynamic decision-making under distributional shifts is of fundamental interest in theory and applications of reinforcement learning: The distribution of the environment in which the data is collected can differ from that of the environment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

We study reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes with continuous state spaces, where data are generated online from a single trajectory under a Markovian behavior policy. To avoid maintaining an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Shengbo Wang

Robust Reinforcement Learning (RRL) is a promising Reinforcement Learning (RL) paradigm aimed at training robust to uncertainty or disturbances models, making them more efficient for real-world applications. Following this paradigm,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-06 Anton Plaksin , Vitaly Kalev

Q-learning is one of the most popular methods in Reinforcement Learning (RL). Transfer Learning aims to utilize the learned knowledge from source tasks to help new tasks to improve the sample complexity of the new tasks. Considering that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-25 Yue Wang , Qi Meng , Wei Cheng , Yuting Liug , Zhi-Ming Ma , Tie-Yan Liu

Replicability, introduced by (Impagliazzo et al. STOC '22), is the notion that algorithms should remain stable under a resampling of their inputs (given access to shared randomness). While a strong and interesting notion of stability, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-09 Max Hopkins , Russell Impagliazzo , Christopher Ye

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 propose a novel distributionally robust $Q$-learning algorithm for the non-tabular case accounting for continuous state spaces where the state transition of the underlying Markov decision process is subject to model uncertainty. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Chung I Lu , Julian Sester , Aijia Zhang

Algorithmic stability is a central concept in statistics and learning theory that measures how sensitive an algorithm's output is to small changes in the training data. Stability plays a crucial role in understanding generalization,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2026-01-21 Abhinav Chakraborty , Yuetian Luo , Rina Foygel Barber

Sample complexity bounds are a common performance metric in the Reinforcement Learning literature. In the discounted cost, infinite horizon setting, all of the known bounds have a factor that is a polynomial in $1/(1-\gamma)$, where $\gamma…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-09 Adithya M. Devraj , Sean P. Meyn

Q-learning is known as one of the fundamental reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. Its convergence has been the focus of extensive research over the past several decades. Recently, a new finitetime error bound and analysis for Q-learning…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-01-17 Donghwna Lee

We consider Markov Decision Problems defined over continuous state and action spaces, where an autonomous agent seeks to learn a map from its states to actions so as to maximize its long-term discounted accumulation of rewards. We address…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-23 Alec Koppel , Ekaterina Tolstaya , Ethan Stump , Alejandro Ribeiro

Q-learning, which seeks to learn the optimal Q-function of a Markov decision process (MDP) in a model-free fashion, lies at the heart of reinforcement learning. When it comes to the synchronous setting (such that independent samples for all…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-18 Gen Li , Changxiao Cai , Yuxin Chen , Yuting Wei , Yuejie Chi

Existing studies indicate that momentum ideas in conventional optimization can be used to improve the performance of Q-learning algorithms. However, the finite-sample analysis for momentum-based Q-learning algorithms is only available for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-31 Bowen Weng , Huaqing Xiong , Lin Zhao , Yingbin Liang , Wei Zhang

Fitted $Q$-iteration (FQI) and soft FQI are widely used value-based methods for offline reinforcement learning, but their standard stability guarantees often depend on Bellman completeness, a strong closure condition that can fail under…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-11 Lars van der Laan , Nathan Kallus

Given a set of trajectories demonstrating the execution of a task safely in a constrained MDP with observable rewards but with unknown constraints and non-observable costs, we aim to find a policy that maximizes the likelihood of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-02 George Papadopoulos , George A. Vouros

We propose a new Q-learning variant, called 2RA Q-learning, that addresses some weaknesses of existing Q-learning methods in a principled manner. One such weakness is an underlying estimation bias which cannot be controlled and often…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-30 Peter Schmitt-Förster , Tobias Sutter

Designing a stabilizing controller for nonlinear systems is a challenging task, especially for high-dimensional problems with unknown dynamics. Traditional reinforcement learning algorithms applied to stabilization tasks tend to drive the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-16 Thanin Quartz , Ruikun Zhou , Hans De Sterck , Jun Liu