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Related papers: No-Regret Reinforcement Learning in Smooth MDPs

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Recently, several studies (Zhou et al., 2021a; Zhang et al., 2021b; Kim et al., 2021; Zhou and Gu, 2022) have provided variance-dependent regret bounds for linear contextual bandits, which interpolates the regret for the worst-case regime…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-22 Heyang Zhao , Jiafan He , Dongruo Zhou , Tong Zhang , Quanquan Gu

We study reinforcement learning (RL) for decision processes with non-Markovian reward, in which high-level knowledge of the task in the form of reward machines is available to the learner. We consider probabilistic reward machines with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-30 Hippolyte Bourel , Anders Jonsson , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard , Chenxiao Ma , Mohammad Sadegh Talebi

We propose a new regret minimization algorithm for episodic sparse linear Markov decision process (SMDP) where the state-transition distribution is a linear function of observed features. The only previously known algorithm for SMDP…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-10-25 Wonyoung Kim , Garud Iyengar , Assaf Zeevi

A recent line of works showed regret bounds in reinforcement learning (RL) can be (nearly) independent of planning horizon, a.k.a.~the horizon-free bounds. However, these regret bounds only apply to settings where a polynomial dependency on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-19 Zihan Zhang , Jason D. Lee , Yuxin Chen , Simon S. Du

Most learning algorithms with formal regret guarantees essentially rely on trying all possible behaviors, which is problematic when some errors cannot be recovered from. Instead, we allow the learning agent to ask for help from a mentor and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Benjamin Plaut , Juan Liévano-Karim , Hanlin Zhu , Stuart Russell

We study reinforcement learning for episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) whose transitions are modelled by a multinomial logistic (MNL) model. Existing algorithms for MNL mixture MDPs yield a regret of $\smash{\tilde{O}(dH^2\sqrt{T})}$…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Pierre Boudart , Pierre Gaillard , Alessandro Rudi

We study reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the finite-horizon episodic setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, the inter-transition times of a continuous-time MDP are exponentially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Xuefeng Gao , Xun Yu Zhou

In this paper, we study the problem of regret minimization for episodic Reinforcement Learning (RL) both in the model-free and the model-based setting. We focus on learning with general function classes and general model classes, and we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-04 Grigoris Velegkas , Zhuoran Yang , Amin Karbasi

We study the constant regret guarantees in reinforcement learning (RL). Our objective is to design an algorithm that incurs only finite regret over infinite episodes with high probability. We introduce an algorithm, Cert-LSVI-UCB, for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-13 Weitong Zhang , Zhiyuan Fan , Jiafan He , Quanquan Gu

We study a Markov matching market involving a planner and a set of strategic agents on the two sides of the market. At each step, the agents are presented with a dynamical context, where the contexts determine the utilities. The planner…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-09 Yifei Min , Tianhao Wang , Ruitu Xu , Zhaoran Wang , Michael I. Jordan , Zhuoran Yang

Existing online learning algorithms for adversarial Markov Decision Processes achieve ${O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret after $T$ rounds of interactions even if the loss functions are chosen arbitrarily by an adversary, with the caveat that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-27 Tiancheng Jin , Junyan Liu , Chloé Rouyer , William Chang , Chen-Yu Wei , Haipeng Luo

This paper studies model-based reinforcement learning (RL) for regret minimization. We focus on finite-horizon episodic RL where the transition model $P$ belongs to a known family of models $\mathcal{P}$, a special case of which is when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-02 Alex Ayoub , Zeyu Jia , Csaba Szepesvari , Mengdi Wang , Lin F. Yang

We consider online learning for episodic stochastically constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), which plays a central role in ensuring the safety of reinforcement learning. Here the loss function can vary arbitrarily across the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-19 Shuang Qiu , Xiaohan Wei , Zhuoran Yang , Jieping Ye , Zhaoran Wang

We present regret minimization algorithms for stochastic contextual MDPs under minimum reachability assumption, using an access to an offline least square regression oracle. We analyze three different settings: where the dynamics is known,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-24 Orin Levy , Yishay Mansour

In constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with adversarial rewards and constraints, a well-known impossibility result prevents any algorithm from attaining both sublinear regret and sublinear constraint violation, when competing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-27 Francesco Emanuele Stradi , Anna Lunghi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We present the E-UC$^3$RL algorithm for regret minimization in Stochastic Contextual Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs). The algorithm operates under the minimal assumptions of realizable function class and access to \emph{offline} least…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-30 Orin Levy , Asaf Cassel , Alon Cohen , Yishay Mansour

We study regret minimization in non-episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs), where all existing algorithms make the strong assumption that the factored structure of the FMDP is known to the learner in advance. In this paper, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-12 Aviv Rosenberg , Yishay Mansour

We study reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation. For episodic time-inhomogeneous linear Markov decision processes (linear MDPs) whose transition probability can be parameterized as a linear function of a given…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-07 Jiafan He , Heyang Zhao , Dongruo Zhou , Quanquan Gu

Any reinforcement learning algorithm that applies to all Markov decision processes (MDPs) will suffer $\Omega(\sqrt{SAT})$ regret on some MDP, where $T$ is the elapsed time and $S$ and $A$ are the cardinalities of the state and action…

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

This paper presents a new framework for analyzing and designing no-regret algorithms for dynamic (possibly adversarial) systems. The proposed framework generalizes the popular online convex optimization framework and extends it to its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-30 Ian Gemp , Sridhar Mahadevan