Related papers: Improved High-Probability Bounds for the Temporal …
There is accumulating evidence in the literature that stability of learning algorithms is a key characteristic that permits a learning algorithm to generalize. Despite various insightful results in this direction, there seems to be an…
Stochastic approximation (SA) is an iterative algorithm for finding the fixed point of an operator using noisy samples and widely used in optimization and Reinforcement Learning (RL). The noise in RL exhibits a Markovian structure, and in…
The focus of this paper is on stochastic variational inequalities (VI) under Markovian noise. A prominent application of our algorithmic developments is the stochastic policy evaluation problem in reinforcement learning. Prior…
This paper provides a finite-time analysis of linear stochastic approximation (LSA) algorithms with fixed step size, a core method in statistics and machine learning. LSA is used to compute approximate solutions of a $d$-dimensional linear…
Gradient temporal difference (Gradient TD) algorithms are a popular class of stochastic approximation (SA) algorithms used for policy evaluation in reinforcement learning. Here, we consider Gradient TD algorithms with an additional heavy…
We study the estimation of the value function for continuous-time Markov diffusion processes using a single, discretely observed ergodic trajectory. Our work provides non-asymptotic statistical guarantees for the least-squares…
Motivated by the widespread use of temporal-difference (TD-) and Q-learning algorithms in reinforcement learning, this paper studies a class of biased stochastic approximation (SA) procedures under a mild "ergodic-like" assumption on the…
We introduce a generalization of temporal-difference (TD) learning to networks of interrelated predictions. Rather than relating a single prediction to itself at a later time, as in conventional TD methods, a TD network relates each…
In this paper, we develop approximate dynamic programming methods for stochastic systems modeled as Markov Decision Processes, given both soft performance criteria and hard constraints in a class of probabilistic temporal logic called…
In this paper, we establish non-asymptotic bounds for accuracy of normal approximation for linear two-timescale stochastic approximation (TTSA) algorithms driven by martingale difference or Markov noise. Focusing on both the last iterate…
Differential temporal difference (TD) methods are value-based reinforcement learning algorithms that have been proposed for infinite-horizon problems. They rely on reward centering, where each reward is centered by the average reward. This…
Dynamic Programming suffers from the curse of dimensionality due to large state and action spaces, a challenge further compounded by uncertainties in the environment. To mitigate these issue, we explore an off-policy based Temporal…
Using insight from numerical approximation of ODEs and the problem formulation and solution methodology of TD learning through a Galerkin relaxation, I propose a new class of TD learning algorithms. After applying the improved numerical…
We study the finite-time convergence of TD learning with linear function approximation under Markovian sampling. Existing proofs for this setting either assume a projection step in the algorithm to simplify the analysis, or require a fairly…
This paper provides a non-asymptotic analysis of linear stochastic approximation (LSA) algorithms with fixed stepsize. This family of methods arises in many machine learning tasks and is used to obtain approximate solutions of a linear…
Temporal difference learning and Residual Gradient methods are the most widely used temporal difference based learning algorithms; however, it has been shown that none of their objective functions is optimal w.r.t approximating the true…
Time bounded reachability is a fundamental problem in model checking continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) and Markov decision processes (CTMDPs) for specifications in continuous stochastic logics. It can be computed by numerically solving…
The task of predicting long-term patient outcomes using supervised machine learning is a challenging one, in part because of the high variance of each patient's trajectory, which can result in the model over-fitting to the training data.…
Temporal difference (TD) learning is a cornerstone of reinforcement learning. In the average-reward setting, standard TD($\lambda$) is highly sensitive to the choice of step-size and thus requires careful tuning to maintain numerical…
We consider large linear and nonlinear fixed point problems, and solution with proximal algorithms. We show that there is a close connection between two seemingly different types of methods from distinct fields: 1) Proximal iterations for…