Related papers: Discounted-Sum Automata with Multiple Discount Fac…
A discounted-sum automaton (NDA) is a nondeterministic finite automaton with edge weights, valuing a run by the discounted sum of visited edge weights. More precisely, the weight in the i-th position of the run is divided by $\lambda^i$,…
Nondeterministic Discounted-Sum Automata (NDAs) are nondeterministic finite automata equipped with a discounting factor $\lambda>1$, and whose transitions are labelled by weights. The value of a run of an NDA is the discounted sum of the…
We look into the problems of comparing nondeterministic discounted-sum automata on finite and infinite words. That is, the problems of checking for automata $A$ and $B$ whether or not it holds that for all words $w$, $A(w)=B(w), A(w) \leq…
We characterize the class of nondeterministic ${\omega}$-automata that can be used for the analysis of finite Markov decision processes (MDPs). We call these automata `good-for-MDPs' (GFM). We show that GFM automata are closed under classic…
This paper investigates how the discount factor and payoff functions can be identified in stationary infinite-horizon dynamic discrete choice models. In single-agent models, we show that common nonparametric assumptions on per-period…
In automata theory, while determinisation provides a standard route to solving many common problems in automata theory, some weak forms of nondeterminism can be dealt with in some problems without costly determinisation. For example, the…
We present efficient algorithms to reduce the size of nondeterministic B\"uchi word automata (NBA) and nondeterministic finite word automata (NFA), while retaining their languages. Additionally, we describe methods to solve PSPACE-complete…
Nondeterministic good-for-MDPs (GFM) automata are for MDP model checking and reinforcement learning what good-for-games (GFG) automata are for reactive synthesis: a more compact alternative to deterministic automata that displays…
Reinforcement learning (RL) agents have traditionally been tasked with maximizing the value function of a Markov decision process (MDP), either in continuous settings, with fixed discount factor $\gamma < 1$, or in episodic settings, with…
A nondeterministic automaton is semantically deterministic (SD) if different nondeterministic choices in the automaton lead to equivalent states. Semantic determinism is interesting as it is a natural relaxation of determinism, and as some…
History-deterministic automata are those in which nondeterministic choices can be correctly resolved stepwise: there is a strategy to select a continuation of a run given the next input letter so that if the overall input word admits some…
The target discounted-sum problem is the following: Given a rational discount factor $0<\lambda<1$ and three rational values $a,b$, and $t$, does there exist a finite or an infinite sequence $w \in \{a,b\}^*$ or $w \in \{a,b\}^\omega$, such…
Machine learning has recently been widely adopted to address the managerial decision making problems, in which the decision maker needs to be able to interpret the contributions of individual attributes in an explicit form. However, there…
Empirical research often cites observed choice responses to variation that shifts expected discounted future utilities, but not current utilities, as an intuitive source of information on time preferences. We study the identification of…
These lecture notes are intended as a supplement to Moore and Mertens' The Nature of Computation or as a standalone resource, and are available to anyone who wants to use them. Comments are welcome, and please let me know if you use these…
The theory of computation is based on abstract computing automata which can be classified into a three-class hierarchy: Finite Automata (FA), Push-down Automata (PDA) and the Turing Machines (TM). Each class corresponds to grammar/language…
Cognitive computation such as e.g. language processing, is conventionally regarded as Turing computation, and Turing machines can be uniquely implemented as nonlinear dynamical systems using generalized shifts and subsequent G\"odel…
Mixtures of factor analysers (MFA) models represent a popular tool for finding structure in data, particularly high-dimensional data. While in most applications the number of clusters, and especially the number of latent factors within…
The simulation of deterministic pushdown automata defined over a one-letter alphabet by finite state automata is investigated from a descriptional complexity point of view. We show that each unary deterministic pushdown automaton of size s…
In this work, we introduce DeepDFA, a novel approach to identifying Deterministic Finite Automata (DFAs) from traces, harnessing a differentiable yet discrete model. Inspired by both the probabilistic relaxation of DFAs and Recurrent Neural…