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We study the offline data-driven sequential decision making problem in the framework of Markov decision process (MDP). In order to enhance the generalizability and adaptivity of the learned policy, we propose to evaluate each policy by a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-11-11 Zhengling Qi , Peng Liao

We consider the problem of designing sample efficient learning algorithms for infinite horizon discounted reward Markov Decision Process. Specifically, we propose the Accelerated Natural Policy Gradient (ANPG) algorithm that utilizes an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-06 Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

We study infinite-horizon robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) on continuous state spaces with structured rectangular ambiguity set. The proposed ambiguity set falls within the convex hull of unknown generating kernels. We utilize the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-28 Mengmeng Li , Yifan Hu , Daniel Kuhn , Yan Li

This paper investigates the optimization problem of an infinite stage discrete time Markov decision process (MDP) with a long-run average metric considering both mean and variance of rewards together. Such performance metric is important…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-11 Li Xia

This paper studies the policy mirror descent (PMD) method, which is a general policy optimization framework in reinforcement learning and can cover a wide range of policy gradient methods by specifying difference mirror maps. Existing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-01 Wenye Li , Hongxu Chen , Jiacai Liu , Ke Wei

The practicality of reinforcement learning algorithms has been limited due to poor scaling with respect to the problem size, as the sample complexity of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy is $\tilde{\Omega}\left(|S||A|H^3 /…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-12 Tyler Sam , Yudong Chen , Christina Lee Yu

Recently, there has been significant progress in understanding reinforcement learning in discounted infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) by deriving tight sample complexity bounds. However, in many real-world applications, an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-05-12 Christoph Dann , Emma Brunskill

Software-intensive systems, such as software product lines and robotics, utilise Markov decision processes (MDPs) to capture uncertainty and analyse sequential decision-making problems. Despite the usefulness of conventional policy…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-01 Alexandros Evangelidis , Gricel Vázquez , Simos Gerasimou

We present a method for solving implicit (factored) Markov decision processes (MDPs) with very large state spaces. We introduce a property of state space partitions which we call epsilon-homogeneity. Intuitively, an epsilon-homogeneous…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-02-08 Thomas L. Dean , Robert Givan , Sonia Leach

In the optimization of dynamic systems, the variables typically have constraints. Such problems can be modeled as a Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). This paper considers the peak Constrained Markov Decision Process (PCMDP), where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-15 Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Aggarwal , Ather Gattami

Deterministic Markov Decision Processes (DMDPs) are a mathematical framework for decision-making where the outcomes and future possible actions are deterministically determined by the current action taken. DMDPs can be viewed as a finite…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Ali Asadi , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Jakob de Raaij

We consider the problem of controlling a fully specified Markov decision process (MDP), also known as the planning problem, when the state space is very large and calculating the optimal policy is intractable. Instead, we pursue the more…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-01-09 Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Peter L. Bartlett , Xi Chen , Alan Malek

We consider infinite-horizon $\gamma$-discounted (linear) constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) where the objective is to find a policy that maximizes the expected cumulative reward subject to expected cumulative constraints. Given…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-29 Xingtu Liu , Lin F. Yang , Sharan Vaswani

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-10-26 Dimitri Scheftelowitsch , Peter Buchholz , Vahid Hashemi , Holger Hermanns

We present a general framework for applying learning algorithms and heuristical guidance to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of our techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive…

In this paper, we study a mean-variance optimization problem in an infinite horizon discrete time discounted Markov decision process (MDP). The objective is to minimize the variance of system rewards with the constraint of mean performance.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-08-24 Li Xia

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a general framework to model decision problems where the system dynamics are changing or only partially known. Efficient methods for some \texttt{sa}-rectangular robust MDPs exist, using its…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-10-06 Navdeep Kumar , Kfir Levy , Kaixin Wang , Shie Mannor

In probably approximately correct (PAC) reinforcement learning (RL), an agent is required to identify an $\epsilon$-optimal policy with probability $1-\delta$. While minimax optimal algorithms exist for this problem, its instance-dependent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Andrea Tirinzoni , Aymen Al-Marjani , Emilie Kaufmann

Safety is a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), particularly in real-world applications such as autonomous driving, robotics, and healthcare. To address this, Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are commonly used…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Chang Liu , Yunfan Li , Lin F. Yang

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (minimize…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-07-08 Mahmoud El Chamie , Behcet Acikmese