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We study the off-policy evaluation (OPE) problem in reinforcement learning with linear function approximation, which aims to estimate the value function of a target policy based on the offline data collected by a behavior policy. We propose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-05 Yifei Min , Tianhao Wang , Dongruo Zhou , Quanquan Gu

In value-based reinforcement learning methods such as deep Q-learning, function approximation errors are known to lead to overestimated value estimates and suboptimal policies. We show that this problem persists in an actor-critic setting…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-10-23 Scott Fujimoto , Herke van Hoof , David Meger

Designing model-free algorithms for distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DRRL) poses fundamental challenges. The robust Bellman operator is nonlinear in the transition kernel, which makes one-sample Bellman updates biased, while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Shengbo Wang , Zexi Zhang

This paper proposes a reinforcement learning (RL)-based backstepping control strategy to achieve fixed time consensus in nonlinear multi-agent systems with strict feedback dynamics. Agents exchange only output information with their…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-07-23 Aria Delshad , Maryam Babazadeh

In recent years, deep off-policy actor-critic algorithms have become a dominant approach to reinforcement learning for continuous control. One of the primary drivers of this improved performance is the use of pessimistic value updates to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-07 Ted Moskovitz , Jack Parker-Holder , Aldo Pacchiano , Michael Arbel , Michael I. Jordan

In value-based deep reinforcement learning methods, approximation of value functions induces overestimation bias and leads to suboptimal policies. We show that in deep actor-critic methods that aim to overcome the overestimation bias, if…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-28 Baturay Saglam , Enes Duran , Dogan C. Cicek , Furkan B. Mutlu , Suleyman S. Kozat

Online continual learning (OCL), which enables AI systems to adaptively learn from non-stationary data streams, is commonly achieved using experience replay (ER)-based methods that retain knowledge by replaying stored past during training.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-26 Zelin Tao , Hao Deng , Mingqing Liu , Lijun Zhang , Shengjie Zhao

Actor-critic algorithms address the dual goals of reinforcement learning (RL), policy evaluation and improvement via two separate function approximators. The practicality of this approach comes at the expense of training instability, caused…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-11 Bahareh Tasdighi , Abdullah Akgül , Manuel Haussmann , Kenny Kazimirzak Brink , Melih Kandemir

Prediction error is critical to assessing the performance of statistical methods and selecting statistical models. We propose the cross-validation and approximated cross-validation methods for estimating prediction error under a broad…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2007-06-13 Jianqing Fan , Chunming Zhang

On error of value function inevitably causes an overestimation phenomenon and has a negative impact on the convergence of the algorithms. To mitigate the negative effects of the approximation error, we propose Error Controlled Actor-critic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-08 Xingen Gao , Fei Chao , Changle Zhou , Zhen Ge , Chih-Min Lin , Longzhi Yang , Xiang Chang , Changjing Shang

We study the exploration problem with approximate linear action-value functions in episodic reinforcement learning under the notion of low inherent Bellman error, a condition normally employed to show convergence of approximate value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-30 Andrea Zanette , Alessandro Lazaric , Mykel Kochenderfer , Emma Brunskill

Bilevel optimizaiton serves as a powerful tool for many machine learning applications. Perturbed pessimistic bilevel problem PBP$\epsilon$, with $\epsilon$ being an arbitrary positive number, is a variant of the bilevel problem to deal with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-09 Haimei Huo , Risheng Liu , Zhixun Su

The key limitation of the verification performance lies in the ability of error detection. With this intuition we designed several variants of pessimistic verification, which are simple workflows that could significantly improve the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-27 Yanxing Huang , Zihan Tang , Zejin Lin , Peng Li , Yang Liu

Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) agents typically learn world models by minimizing predictive loss. However, powerful RL optimizers inevitably exploit minor model inaccuracies, leading to simulator exploitation and a reality gap…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Christoph Dann , Yishay Mansour , Mehryar Mohri

In [1], Sinopoli et al. analyze the problem of optimal estimation for linear Gaussian systems where packets containing observations are dropped according to an i.i.d. Bernoulli process, modeling a memoryless erasure channel. In this case…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2010-05-17 Yilin Mo , Bruno Sinopoli

Distributional reinforcement learning improves performance by capturing environmental stochasticity, but a comprehensive theoretical understanding of its effectiveness remains elusive. In addition, the intractable element of the infinite…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-14 Taehyun Cho , Seungyub Han , Seokhun Ju , Dohyeong Kim , Kyungjae Lee , Jungwoo Lee

Offline reinforcement learning (RL), where the agent aims to learn the optimal policy based on the data collected by a behavior policy, has attracted increasing attention in recent years. While offline RL with linear function approximation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Qiwei Di , Heyang Zhao , Jiafan He , Quanquan Gu

Precision and Recall are fundamental metrics in machine learning tasks where both accurate predictions and comprehensive coverage are essential, such as in multi-label learning, language generation, medical studies, and recommender systems.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Lee Cohen , Yishay Mansour , Shay Moran , Han Shao

We present an actor-critic-type reinforcement learning algorithm for solving the problem of hedging a portfolio of financial instruments such as securities and over-the-counter derivatives using purely historic data. The key characteristics…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2024-06-26 Hans Buehler , Phillip Murray , Ben Wood

Actor-critic (AC) methods are widely used in reinforcement learning (RL) and benefit from the flexibility of using any policy gradient method as the actor and value-based method as the critic. The critic is usually trained by minimizing the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Sharan Vaswani , Amirreza Kazemi , Reza Babanezhad , Nicolas Le Roux