Related papers: Bridging the Gap between Newton-Raphson Method and…
Many practical optimization problems involve objective function values that are corrupted by unavoidable numerical errors. In smooth nonconvex optimization, quasi-Newton methods combined with line search are widely used due to their…
This study proposes a cubic regularization of the Newton method for generating weakly efficient points of unconstrained vector optimization problems under no convexity assumption on the objective function. It is observed that at a given…
This paper considers the problem of minimizing the sum of a smooth function and the Schatten-$p$ norm of the matrix. Our contribution involves proposing accelerated iteratively reweighted nuclear norm methods designed for solving the…
This paper considers the regularization continuation method and the trust-region updating strategy for the nonlinearly equality-constrained optimization problem. Namely, it uses the inverse of the regularization quasi-Newton matrix as the…
Recently, the impressive empirical success of policy gradient (PG) methods has catalyzed the development of their theoretical foundations. Despite the huge efforts directed at the design of efficient stochastic PG-type algorithms, the…
We propose a communication- and computation-efficient distributed optimization algorithm using second-order information for solving ERM problems with a nonsmooth regularization term. Current second-order and quasi-Newton methods for this…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful framework for sequential decision-making in dynamic environments, particularly when system parameters are unknown. This paper investigates RL-based control for entropy-regularized…
Many reinforcement learning algorithms can be seen as versions of approximate policy iteration (API). While standard API often performs poorly, it has been shown that learning can be stabilized by regularizing each policy update by the…
We make three contributions toward better understanding policy gradient methods in the tabular setting. First, we show that with the true gradient, policy gradient with a softmax parametrization converges at a $O(1/t)$ rate, with constants…
In this paper, we study large-scale convex optimization algorithms based on the Newton method applied to regularized generalized self-concordant losses, which include logistic regression and softmax regression. We first prove that our new…
Large scale optimization problems are ubiquitous in machine learning and data analysis and there is a plethora of algorithms for solving such problems. Many of these algorithms employ sub-sampling, as a way to either speed up the…
Reinforcement learning (RL) problems over general state and action spaces are notoriously challenging. In contrast to the tableau setting, one can not enumerate all the states and then iteratively update the policies for each state. This…
Natural policy gradient (NPG) is a common policy optimization algorithm and can be viewed as mirror ascent in the space of probabilities. Recently, Vaswani et al. [2021] introduced a policy gradient method that corresponds to mirror ascent…
We introduce a continuous policy-value iteration algorithm where the approximations of the value function of a stochastic control problem and the optimal control are simultaneously updated through Langevin-type dynamics. This framework…
Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) aims to facilitate a learner's ability to imitate expert behavior by acquiring reward functions that explain the expert's decisions. Regularized IRL applies strongly convex regularizers to the learner's…
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…
We propose and study a general framework for regularized Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the goal is to find an optimal policy that maximizes the expected discounted total reward plus a policy regularization term. The extant…
Several researchers have recently investigated the connection between reinforcement learning and classification. We are motivated by proposals of approximate policy iteration schemes without value functions which focus on policy…
Policy optimization methods with function approximation are widely used in multi-agent reinforcement learning. However, it remains elusive how to design such algorithms with statistical guarantees. Leveraging a multi-agent performance…
Policy gradient methods with actor-critic schemes demonstrate tremendous empirical successes, especially when the actors and critics are parameterized by neural networks. However, it remains less clear whether such "neural" policy gradient…