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Related papers: On Value Iteration Convergence in Connected MDPs

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We propose a new iterative algorithm for generating a subset of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of large matrices which generalizes the method of optimal relaxations. We also give convergence criteria for the iterative process, investigate its…

General Physics · Physics 2009-11-07 F. Andreozzi , A. Porrino , N. Lo Iudice

We study policy optimization for infinite-horizon, discounted constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs). While existing theoretical guarantees typically hold for the mixture policy, deploying such a policy is computationally and memory…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Michael Lu , Max Qiushi Lin , Mo Chen , Sharan Vaswani

Policy gradient methods are among the most effective methods in challenging reinforcement learning problems with large state and/or action spaces. However, little is known about even their most basic theoretical convergence properties,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-16 Alekh Agarwal , Sham M. Kakade , Jason D. Lee , Gaurav Mahajan

This article introduces a model for interacting vertex-reinforced random walks, each taking values on a complete sub-graph of a locally finite undirected graph. The transition probability for a walk to a given vertex depends on the…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-08-25 Fernando P. A. Prado , Rafael A. Rosales

Learning Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the presence of the adversary is a challenging problem in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, we study RL in episodic MDPs with adversarial reward and full information feedback, where the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-21 Jiafan He , Dongruo Zhou , Quanquan Gu

We consider the Monte-Carlo first visit algorithm, of which the goal is to find the optimal control in a Markov decision process with finite state space and finite number of possible actions. We show its convergence when the discount factor…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Sylvain Delattre , Nicolas Fournier

This paper investigates the optimal ergodic sublinear convergence rate of the relaxed proximal point algorithm for solving monotone variational inequality problems. The exact worst case convergence rate is computed using the performance…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-07-15 Guoyong Gu , Junfeng Yang

This paper describes the structure of optimal policies for infinite-state Markov Decision Processes with setwise continuous transition probabilities. The action sets may be noncompact. The objective criteria are either the expected total…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-08-03 Eugene A. Feinberg , Pavlo O. Kasyanov

We consider local planning in fixed-horizon MDPs with a generative model under the assumption that the optimal value function lies close to the span of a feature map. The generative model provides a local access to the MDP: The planner can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-12 Gellért Weisz , Philip Amortila , Barnabás Janzer , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Nan Jiang , Csaba Szepesvári

We introduce a class of models for multidimensional control problems which we call skip-free Markov decision processes on trees. We describe and analyse an algorithm applicable to Markov decision processes of this type that are skip-free in…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2013-11-11 E. J. Collins

We establish a connection between policy evaluation in Markov decision processes and PageRank in network analysis. For a fixed policy, we show that the value function of a discounted Markov decision process can be obtained, up to an…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-04 Konstantin Avrachenkov , Lorenzo Gregoris , Nelly Litvak

In the iterative algorithm recently proposed by Waxman for solving eigenvalue problems, we point out that the convergence rate may be improved. For many non-singular symmetric potentials which vanish asymptotically, a simple analytical…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-11-13 W. A. Berger , H. G. Miller

Multi-period portfolio optimization is important for real portfolio management, as it accounts for transaction costs, path-dependent risks, and the intertemporal structure of trading decisions that single-period models cannot capture.…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Yuxuan Linghu , Zhiyuan Liu , Qi Deng

We study reward-free reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation, where the agent works in two phases: (1) in the exploration phase, the agent interacts with the environment but cannot access the reward; and (2) in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Junkai Zhang , Weitong Zhang , Quanquan Gu

The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has emerged as a powerful technique for large-scale structured optimization. Despite many recent results on the convergence properties of ADMM, a quantitative characterization of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-11-17 Euhanna Ghadimi , André Teixeira , Iman Shames , Mikael Johansson

A classic solution technique for Markov decision processes (MDP) and stochastic games (SG) is value iteration (VI). Due to its good practical performance, this approximative approach is typically preferred over exact techniques, even though…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-04-21 Jan Křetínský , Tobias Meggendorfer , Maximilian Weininger

We present two Policy Gradient-based algorithms with general parametrization in the context of infinite-horizon average reward Markov Decision Process (MDP). The first one employs Implicit Gradient Transport for variance reduction, ensuring…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-13 Swetha Ganesh , Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

This note describes sufficient conditions under which total-cost and average-cost Markov decision processes (MDPs) with general state and action spaces, and with weakly continuous transition probabilities, can be reduced to discounted MDPs.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-11-21 Eugene A. Feinberg , Jefferson Huang

We study the existing algorithms that solve the multidimensional martingale optimal transport. Then we provide a new algorithm based on entropic regularization and Newton's method. Then we provide theoretical convergence rate results and we…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-12-31 Hadrien De March

We consider a dynamic programming (DP) approach to approximately solving an infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problem with a fixed initial-state for the expected total discounted-reward criterion with a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-08 Hyeong Soo Chang