Related papers: The surprising efficiency of temporal difference l…
We consider a distributed setup for reinforcement learning, where each agent has a copy of the same Markov Decision Process but transitions are sampled from the corresponding Markov chain independently by each agent. We show that in this…
The parameters of a discrete stationary Markov model are transition probabilities between states. Traditionally, data consist in sequences of observed states for a given number of individuals over the whole observation period. In such a…
In this paper, we introduce proximal gradient temporal difference learning, which provides a principled way of designing and analyzing true stochastic gradient temporal difference learning algorithms. We show how gradient TD (GTD)…
Time bounded reachability is a fundamental problem in model checking continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) and Markov decision processes (CTMDPs) for specifications in continuous stochastic logics. It can be computed by numerically solving…
Designing sample-efficient and computationally feasible reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms is particularly challenging in environments with large or infinite state and action spaces. In this paper, we advance this effort by presenting…
Offline policy evaluation is a fundamental statistical problem in reinforcement learning that involves estimating the value function of some decision-making policy given data collected by a potentially different policy. In order to tackle…
This paper studies the exponential stability of random matrix products driven by a general (possibly unbounded) state space Markov chain. It is a cornerstone in the analysis of stochastic algorithms in machine learning (e.g. for parameter…
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…
We develop a central limit theorem (CLT) for a non-parametric estimator of the transition matrices in controlled Markov chains (CMCs) with finite state-action spaces. Our results establish precise conditions on the logging policy under…
Reinforcement learning (RL) is currently one of the most prominent methods for optimizing dynamical systems, with breakthrough results across various fields. The framework is based on the concept of a Markov decision process (MDP), leading…
TD($\lambda$) in value-based MARL algorithms or the Temporal Difference critic learning in Actor-Critic-based (AC-based) algorithms synergistically integrate elements from Monte-Carlo simulation and Q function bootstrapping via dynamic…
Predicting and reasoning about the future lie at the heart of many time-series questions. For example, goal-conditioned reinforcement learning can be viewed as learning representations to predict which states are likely to be visited in the…
We propose a novel framework of estimating systemic risk measures and risk allocations based on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. We consider a class of allocations whose jth component can be written as some risk measure of the jth…
Differential temporal difference (TD) methods are value-based reinforcement learning algorithms that have been proposed for infinite-horizon problems. They rely on reward centering, where each reward is centered by the average reward. This…
Accurate and efficient estimation of rare events probabilities is of significant importance, since often the occurrences of such events have widespread impacts. The focus in this work is on precisely quantifying these probabilities, often…
We study the evaluation of a policy under best- and worst-case perturbations to a Markov decision process (MDP), using transition observations from the original MDP, whether they are generated under the same or a different policy. This is…
Temporal-Difference (TD) learning is a standard and very successful reinforcement learning approach, at the core of both algorithms that learn the value of a given policy, as well as algorithms which learn how to improve policies.…
Recurrent neural networks for language models like long short-term memory (LSTM) have been utilized as a tool for modeling and predicting long term dynamics of complex stochastic molecular systems. Recently successful examples on learning…
A common optimization tool used in deep reinforcement learning is momentum, which consists in accumulating and discounting past gradients, reapplying them at each iteration. We argue that, unlike in supervised learning, momentum in Temporal…
In a number of applications, particularly in financial and actuarial mathematics, it is of interest to characterize the tail distribution of a random variable $V$ satisfying the distributional equation $V\stackrel{\mathcal{D}}{=}f(V)$,…