Related papers: Two-Step Q-Learning

This paper addresses the limitations of conventional vector quantization algorithms, particularly K-Means and its variant K-Means++, and investigates the Stochastic Quantization (SQ) algorithm as a scalable alternative for high-dimensional…

A large number of application problems involve two levels of optimization, where one optimization task is nested inside the other. These problems are known as bilevel optimization problems and have been studied by both classical…

We develop a Sequential Quadratic Optimization (SQP) algorithm for minimizing a stochastic objective function subject to deterministic equality constraints. The method utilizes two different stepsizes, one which exclusively scales the…

We introduce a one-step generative policy for offline reinforcement learning that maps noise directly to actions via a residual reformulation of MeanFlow, making it compatible with Q-learning. While one-step Gaussian policies enable fast…

In this paper, we settle the sampling complexity of solving discounted two-player turn-based zero-sum stochastic games up to polylogarithmic factors. Given a stochastic game with discount factor $\gamma\in(0,1)$ we provide an algorithm that…

We consider optimal sensor scheduling with unknown communication channel statistics. We formulate two types of scheduling problems with the communication rate being a soft or hard constraint, respectively. We first present some structural…

Existing convergence analyses of Q-learning mostly focus on the vanilla stochastic gradient descent (SGD) type of updates. Despite the Adaptive Moment Estimation (Adam) has been commonly used for practical Q-learning algorithms, there has…

This paper proposes a new algorithm -- the \underline{S}ingle-timescale Do\underline{u}ble-momentum \underline{St}ochastic \underline{A}pprox\underline{i}matio\underline{n} (SUSTAIN) -- for tackling stochastic unconstrained bilevel…

Sequential decision tasks with incomplete information are characterized by the exploration problem; namely the trade-off between further exploration for learning more about the environment and immediate exploitation of the accrued…

Motivated by their broad applications in reinforcement learning, we study the linear two-time-scale stochastic approximation, an iterative method using two different step sizes for finding the solutions of a system of two equations. Our…

Stochastic optimisation algorithms are the de facto standard for machine learning with large amounts of data. Handling only a subset of available data in each optimisation step dramatically reduces the per-iteration computational costs,…

In this paper, we consider both first- and second-order techniques to address continuous optimization problems arising in machine learning. In the first-order case, we propose a framework of transition from deterministic or…

Bias problems in the estimation of $Q$-values are a well-known obstacle that slows down convergence of $Q$-learning and actor-critic methods. One of the reasons of the success of modern RL algorithms is partially a direct or indirect…

Convex quadratic programs (QPs) constitute a fundamental computational primitive across diverse domains including financial optimization, control systems, and machine learning. The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has…

Online learning to rank is a sequential decision-making problem where in each round the learning agent chooses a list of items and receives feedback in the form of clicks from the user. Many sample-efficient algorithms have been proposed…

We propose a new reinforcement learning algorithm derived from a regularized linear-programming formulation of optimal control in MDPs. The method is closely related to the classic Relative Entropy Policy Search (REPS) algorithm of Peters…

We give an efficient algorithm for learning a binary function in a given class C of bounded VC dimension, with training data distributed according to P and test data according to Q, where P and Q may be arbitrary distributions over X. This…

Motivated by applications in optimization and machine learning, we consider stochastic quasi-Newton (SQN) methods for solving stochastic optimization problems. In the literature, the convergence analysis of these algorithms relies on strong…

In this paper, a novel stochastic extra-step quasi-Newton method is developed to solve a class of nonsmooth nonconvex composite optimization problems. We assume that the gradient of the smooth part of the objective function can only be…

We present two sampled quasi-Newton methods (sampled LBFGS and sampled LSR1) for solving empirical risk minimization problems that arise in machine learning. Contrary to the classical variants of these methods that sequentially build…