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Related papers: Improving Robust Decisions with Data

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Local decision rules are commonly understood to be more explainable, due to the local nature of the patterns involved. With numerical optimization methods such as gradient boosting, ensembles of local decision rules can gain good predictive…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-27 Xin Du , Subramanian Ramamoorthy , Wouter Duivesteijn , Jin Tian , Mykola Pechenizkiy

We study how a decision-maker (DM) learns from data of unknown quality to form robust, ''general-purpose'' posterior beliefs. We develop a framework for robust learning and belief formation under a minimax-regret criterion, cast as a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-02-18 Yeon-Koo Che , Longjian Li , Tianling Luo

A novel data-driven stochastic robust optimization (DDSRO) framework is proposed for optimization under uncertainty leveraging labeled multi-class uncertainty data. Uncertainty data in large datasets are often collected from various…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-04 Chao Ning , Fengqi You

In robust Markov decision processes (MDPs), the uncertainty in the transition kernel is addressed by finding a policy that optimizes the worst-case performance over an uncertainty set of MDPs. While much of the literature has focused on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-02 Yue Wang , Alvaro Velasquez , George Atia , Ashley Prater-Bennette , Shaofeng Zou

Robust optimization has been established as a leading methodology to approach decision problems under uncertainty. To derive a robust optimization model, a central ingredient is to identify a suitable model for uncertainty, which is called…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-10 Marc Goerigk , Jannis Kurtz

Stochastic and soft optimal policies resulting from entropy-regularized Markov decision processes (ER-MDP) are desirable for exploration and imitation learning applications. Motivated by the fact that such policies are sensitive with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-03 Tien Mai , Patrick Jaillet

While the traditional viewpoint in machine learning and statistics assumes training and testing samples come from the same population, practice belies this fiction. One strategy -- coming from robust statistics and optimization -- is thus…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-07-08 Maxime Cauchois , Suyash Gupta , Alnur Ali , John C. Duchi

One key challenge for multi-task Reinforcement learning (RL) in practice is the absence of task indicators. Robust RL has been applied to deal with task ambiguity, but may result in over-conservative policies. To balance the worst-case…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Mengdi Xu , Peide Huang , Yaru Niu , Visak Kumar , Jielin Qiu , Chao Fang , Kuan-Hui Lee , Xuewei Qi , Henry Lam , Bo Li , Ding Zhao

This paper describes a novel approach to planning which takes advantage of decision theory to greatly improve robustness in an uncertain environment. We present an algorithm which computes conditional plans of maximum expected utility. This…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-02-28 Stephen G. Pimentel , Lawrence M. Brem

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with unknown disturbance distribution and address this problem using the robust Markov decision process (RMDP) approach. We construct the empirical distribution of the unknown disturbance…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-11 Sivaramakrishnan Ramani

Robust Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are receiving much attention in learning a robust policy which is less sensitive to environment changes. There are an increasing number of works analyzing sample-efficiency of robust MDPs. However,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-09-13 Wenhao Yang , Han Wang , Tadashi Kozuno , Scott M. Jordan , Zhihua Zhang

Fueled by advances in both robust optimization theory and reinforcement learning (RL), robust Markov Decision Processes (RMDPs) have garnered increasing attention due to their powerful capability for sequential decision-making under…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-08 Wenfan Ou , Sheng Bi

We address the problem of computing reliable policies in reinforcement learning problems with limited data. In particular, we compute policies that achieve good returns with high confidence when deployed. This objective, known as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Bahram Behzadian , Reazul Hasan Russel , Marek Petrik , Chin Pang Ho

Auto-regressive generation models achieve competitive performance across many different NLP tasks such as summarization, question answering, and classifications. However, they are also known for being slow in inference, which makes them…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-05-08 Shujian Zhang , Korawat Tanwisuth , Chengyue Gong , Pengcheng He , Mingyuan Zhou

In performative stochastic optimization, decisions can influence the distribution of random parameters, rendering the data-generating process itself decision-dependent. In practice, decision-makers rarely have access to the true…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-27 Zhuangzhuang Jia , Yijie Wang , Roy Dong , Grani A. Hanasusanto

In this paper, we focus on the problem of robustifying reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms with respect to model uncertainties. Indeed, in the framework of model-based RL, we propose to merge the theory of constrained Markov decision…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-13 Reazul Hasan Russel , Mouhacine Benosman , Jeroen Van Baar

Data-driven decision-making under uncertainty typically presumes the collection of historical data from an unknown target probability distribution. However, one may have no access to any data from the target distribution prior to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-23 Xianyu Li , Huan Xu , Xiaolin Huang , Chao Shang

The ability to compute reward-optimal policies for given and known finite Markov decision processes (MDPs) underpins a variety of applications across planning, controller synthesis, and verification. However, we often want policies (1) to…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Linus Heck , Filip Macák , Milan Češka , Sebastian Junges

The Robust Markov Decision Process (RMDP) framework focuses on designing control policies that are robust against the parameter uncertainties due to the mismatches between the simulator model and real-world settings. An RMDP problem is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-17 Kishan Panaganti , Dileep Kalathil

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are formal models commonly used in sequential decision-making. MDPs capture the stochasticity that may arise, for instance, from imprecise actuators via probabilities in the transition function. However, in…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Marnix Suilen , Thiago D. Simão , David Parker , Nils Jansen