Related papers: Positive Dynamic Programming: A Critique
Planning problems are hard, motion planning, for example, isPSPACE-hard. Such problems are even more difficult in the presence of uncertainty. Although, Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) provide a formal framework for such problems, finding…
We propose a general framework for studying optimal impulse control problem in the presence of uncertainty on the parameters. Given a prior on the distribution of the unknown parameters, we explain how it should evolve according to the…
Active learning theories and methods have been extensively studied in classical statistical learning settings. However, deep active learning, i.e., active learning with deep learning models, is usually based on empirical criteria without…
In adversarial multi-armed bandits, two performance measures are commonly used: static regret, which compares the learner to the best fixed arm, and dynamic regret, which compares it to the best sequence of arms. While optimal algorithms…
Robust Optimization has traditionally taken a pessimistic, or worst-case viewpoint of uncertainty which is motivated by a desire to find sets of optimal policies that maintain feasibility under a variety of operating conditions. In this…
A large number of recent studies consider a compartmental SIR model to study optimal control policies aimed at containing the diffusion of COVID-19 while minimizing the economic costs of preventive measures. Such problems are non-convex and…
In this paper, we obtain results about the positive definiteness, the continuity and the level-boundedness of two optimal value functions of specific parametric optimization problems. Those two optimization problems are generalizations of…
We consider a discounted infinite horizon optimal stopping problem. If the underlying distribution is known a priori, the solution of this problem is obtained via dynamic programming (DP) and is given by a well known threshold rule. When…
We analyze an optimal stopping problem with a constraint on the expected cost. When the reward function and cost function are Lipschitz continuous in state variable, we show that the value of such an optimal stopping problem is a continuous…
Using the tools of the Markov Decision Processes, we justify the dynamic programming approach to the optimal impulse control of deterministic dynamical systems. We prove the equivalence of the integral and differential forms of the…
Approximate dynamic programming (ADP) has proven itself in a wide range of applications spanning large-scale transportation problems, health care, revenue management, and energy systems. The design of effective ADP algorithms has many…
In this paper, we develop a method to automatically generate a control policy for a dynamical system modeled as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The control specification is given as a Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formula over a set of…
We introduce the Blackwell discount factor for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Classical objectives for MDPs include discounted, average, and Blackwell optimality. Many existing approaches to computing average-optimal policies solve for…
Probabilistic programming is a growing area that strives to make statistical analysis more accessible, by separating probabilistic modelling from probabilistic inference. In practice this decoupling is difficult. No single inference…
In this paper we present an algorithmic framework for solving a class of combinatorial optimization problems on graphs with bounded pathwidth. The problems are NP-hard in general, but solvable in linear time on this type of graphs. The…
In recommender systems, users always choose the favorite items to rate, which leads to data missing not at random and poses a great challenge for unbiased evaluation and learning of prediction models. Currently, the doubly robust (DR)…
We consider the problem of optimizing the steady state of a dynamical system in closed loop. Conventionally, the design of feedback optimization control laws assumes that the system is stationary. However, in reality, the dynamics of the…
A dynamical programming approach is used to deal with the problem of controlling the directed abelian Dhar-Ramaswamy model on two-dimensional square lattice. Two strategies are considered to obtain explicit results to this task. First, the…
This paper shows the usefulness of the Perov contraction theorem, which is a generalization of the classical Banach contraction theorem, for solving Markov dynamic programming problems. When the reward function is unbounded, combining an…
Bayesian approaches developed to solve the optimal design of sequential experiments are mathematically elegant but computationally challenging. Recently, techniques using amortization have been proposed to make these Bayesian approaches…