Related papers: An MILP-Based Solution Scheme for Factored and Rob…
This paper discusses algorithms for solving Markov decision processes (MDPs) that have monotone optimal policies. We propose a two-stage alternating convex optimization scheme that can accelerate the search for an optimal policy by…
Online learning algorithms are designed to perform in non-stationary environments, but generally there is no notion of a dynamic state to model constraints on current and future actions as a function of past actions. State-based models are…
We introduce new differentially private (DP) mechanisms for gradient-based machine learning (ML) with multiple passes (epochs) over a dataset, substantially improving the achievable privacy-utility-computation tradeoffs. We formalize the…
Markov decision processes (MDP) are useful to model concurrent process optimisation problems, but verifying them with numerical methods is often intractable. Existing approximative approaches do not scale well and are limited to memoryless…
A constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) approach is developed for response-adaptive procedures in clinical trials with binary outcomes. The resulting CMDP class of Bayesian response -- adaptive procedures can be used to target a…
Markov Decision Process (MDP) presents a mathematical framework to formulate the learning processes of agents in reinforcement learning. MDP is limited by the Markovian assumption that a reward only depends on the immediate state and…
In classical Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), action costs and transition probabilities are assumed to be known, although an accurate estimation of these parameters is often not possible in practice. This study addresses MDPs under cost…
We present a general framework for applying machine-learning algorithms to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of these techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive exploration of the…
Dynamic optimization of mean and variance in Markov decision processes (MDPs) is a long-standing challenge caused by the failure of dynamic programming. In this paper, we propose a new approach to find the globally optimal policy for…
Numerous real-world decision-making problems can be formulated and solved using Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) models. However, the transformation of these problems into MILP models heavily relies on expertise in operations…
We give polynomial-time algorithms for computing the values of Markov decision processes (MDPs) with limsup and liminf objectives. A real-valued reward is assigned to each state, and the value of an infinite path in the MDP is the limsup…
The Markov decision process (MDP) formulation used to model many real-world sequential decision making problems does not efficiently capture the setting where the set of available decisions (actions) at each time step is stochastic.…
The solution convergence of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) can be accelerated by prioritized sweeping of states ranked by their potential impacts to other states. In this paper, we present new heuristics to speed up the solution…
It has recently been shown that if feedback effects of decisions are ignored, then imposing fairness constraints such as demographic parity or equality of opportunity can actually exacerbate unfairness. We propose to address this challenge…
We study an approach to policy selection for large relational Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We consider a variant of approximate policy iteration (API) that replaces the usual value-function learning step with a learning step in policy…
We present a method for a certain class of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that can relate the optimal policy back to one or more reward sources in the environment. For a given initial state, without fully computing the value function,…
We study the policy testing problem in discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the fixed-confidence setting under a generative model with static sampling. The goal is to decide whether the value of a given policy exceeds a specified…
While significant advancements have been made in the field of fair machine learning, the majority of studies focus on scenarios where the decision model operates on a static population. In this paper, we study fairness in dynamic systems…
Designing control policies for large, distributed systems is challenging, especially in the context of critical, temporal logic based specifications (e.g., safety) that must be met with high probability. Compositional methods for such…
The standard Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulation hinges on the assumption that an action is executed immediately after it was chosen. However, assuming it is often unrealistic and can lead to catastrophic failures in applications such…