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Related papers: No-Regret Reinforcement Learning in Smooth MDPs

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Achieving sample efficiency in online episodic reinforcement learning (RL) requires optimally balancing exploration and exploitation. When it comes to a finite-horizon episodic Markov decision process with $S$ states, $A$ actions and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Gen Li , Laixi Shi , Yuxin Chen , Yuejie Chi

We consider undiscounted reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs) where both the reward functions and the state-transition probabilities may vary (gradually or abruptly) over time. For this problem setting, we propose an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-11 Pratik Gajane , Ronald Ortner , Peter Auer

Despite rapid progress in theoretical reinforcement learning (RL) over the last few years, most of the known guarantees are worst-case in nature, failing to take advantage of structure that may be known a priori about a given RL problem at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Noah Golowich , Ankur Moitra

Online reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) remains less theoretically and algorithmically developed than its episodic counterpart, with many algorithms suffering from high ``burn-in'' costs and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-26 Guy Zamir , Matthew Zurek , Yudong Chen

We study the regret of reinforcement learning from offline data generated by a fixed behavior policy in an infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision process (MDP). While existing analyses of common approaches, such as fitted $Q$-iteration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-13 Yichun Hu , Nathan Kallus , Masatoshi Uehara

State-of-the-art efficient model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms typically act by iteratively solving empirical models, i.e., by performing \emph{full-planning} on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) built by the gathered…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-01 Yonathan Efroni , Nadav Merlis , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Shie Mannor

We present a reduction from reinforcement learning (RL) to no-regret online learning based on the saddle-point formulation of RL, by which "any" online algorithm with sublinear regret can generate policies with provable performance…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-03 Ching-An Cheng , Remi Tachet des Combes , Byron Boots , Geoff Gordon

We study the model-based undiscounted reinforcement learning for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). The oracle we consider is the optimal policy of the POMDP with a known environment in terms of the average reward over…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Yi Xiong , Ningyuan Chen , Xuefeng Gao , Xiang Zhou

Policy Optimization (PO) methods are among the most popular Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms in practice. Recently, Sherman et al. [2023a] proposed a PO-based algorithm with rate-optimal regret guarantees under the linear Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-04 Asaf Cassel , Aviv Rosenberg

Strong worst-case performance bounds for episodic reinforcement learning exist but fortunately in practice RL algorithms perform much better than such bounds would predict. Algorithms and theory that provide strong problem-dependent bounds…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Andrea Zanette , Emma Brunskill

We investigate online Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with adversarially changing loss functions and known transitions. We choose dynamic regret as the performance measure, defined as the performance difference between the learner and any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-29 Peng Zhao , Long-Fei Li , Zhi-Hua Zhou

We derive a novel asymptotic problem-dependent lower-bound for regret minimization in finite-horizon tabular Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). While, similar to prior work (e.g., for ergodic MDPs), the lower-bound is the solution to an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-25 Andrea Tirinzoni , Matteo Pirotta , Alessandro Lazaric

Reinforcement learning algorithms are widely used in domains where it is desirable to provide a personalized service. In these domains it is common that user data contains sensitive information that needs to be protected from third parties.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Evrard Garcelon , Vianney Perchet , Ciara Pike-Burke , Matteo Pirotta

We study minimax optimal reinforcement learning in episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs), which are MDPs with conditionally independent transition components. Assuming the factorization is known, we propose two model-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Yi Tian , Jian Qian , Suvrit Sra

We consider the problem of learning to optimize an unknown Markov decision process (MDP). We show that, if the MDP can be parameterized within some known function class, we can obtain regret bounds that scale with the dimensionality, rather…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-11-04 Ian Osband , Benjamin Van Roy

Reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) with large state spaces is a challenging problem. The performance of standard RL algorithms degrades drastically with the dimensionality of state space. However, in practice,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-06-21 Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Alessandro Lazaric , Animashree Anandkumar

We study variance-dependent regret bounds for Markov decision processes (MDPs). Algorithms with variance-dependent regret guarantees can automatically exploit environments with low variance (e.g., enjoying constant regret on deterministic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Runlong Zhou , Zihan Zhang , Simon S. Du

In order to make good decision under uncertainty an agent must learn from observations. To do so, two of the most common frameworks are Contextual Bandits and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). In this paper, we study whether there exist…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Andrea Zanette , Emma Brunskill

We consider un-discounted reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) under drifting non-stationarity, i.e., both the reward and state transition distributions are allowed to evolve over time, as long as their respective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-26 Wang Chi Cheung , David Simchi-Levi , Ruihao Zhu

We study model-based reinforcement learning (RL) for episodic Markov decision processes (MDP) whose transition probability is parametrized by an unknown transition core with features of state and action. Despite much recent progress in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-11-19 Taehyun Hwang , Min-hwan Oh