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The Adversarial Markov Decision Process (AMDP) is a learning framework that deals with unknown and varying tasks in decision-making applications like robotics and recommendation systems. A major limitation of the AMDP formalism, however, is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-06 Sang Bin Moon , Abolfazl Hashemi

Recent research has revived and amplified interest in algorithms for undiscounted average reward reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon, non-episodic (continuing) tasks. Semi-Markov decision processes (SMDPs) are of particular interest.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Erel Shtossel , Alicia Vidler , Uri Shaham , Gal A. Kaminka

We study minimax optimal reinforcement learning in episodic factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs), which are MDPs with conditionally independent transition components. Assuming the factorization is known, we propose two model-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Yi Tian , Jian Qian , Suvrit Sra

In the optimization of dynamical systems, the variables typically have constraints. Such problems can be modeled as a constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). This paper considers a model-free approach to the problem, where the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-02 Qinbo Bai , Vaneet Aggarwal , Ather Gattami

We consider online learning in episodic loop-free Markov decision processes (MDPs), where the loss function can change arbitrarily between episodes, and the transition function is not known to the learner. We show…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-21 Aviv Rosenberg , Yishay Mansour

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

We study the reinforcement learning problem in the setting of finite-horizon episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with $S$ states, $A$ actions, and episode length $H$. We propose a model-free algorithm UCB-Advantage and prove that it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-09 Zihan Zhang , Yuan Zhou , Xiangyang Ji

We present regret minimization algorithms for stochastic contextual MDPs under minimum reachability assumption, using an access to an offline least square regression oracle. We analyze three different settings: where the dynamics is known,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-24 Orin Levy , Yishay Mansour

We study methods based on reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces for estimating the value function of an infinite-horizon discounted Markov reward process (MRP). We study a regularized form of the kernel least-squares temporal difference (LSTD)…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-09-27 Yaqi Duan , Mengdi Wang , Martin J. Wainwright

We study reinforcement learning with linear function approximation and finite-memory approximations for partially observed Markov decision processes (POMDPs). We first present an algorithm for the value evaluation of finite-memory feedback…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-22 Ali Devran Kara

We consider the problem of learning an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP) that is weakly communicating in the infinite horizon setting. We propose a Thompson Sampling-based reinforcement learning algorithm with dynamic episodes (TSDE).…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-09-15 Yi Ouyang , Mukul Gagrani , Ashutosh Nayyar , Rahul Jain

Policy optimization is a widely-used method in reinforcement learning. Due to its local-search nature, however, theoretical guarantees on global optimality often rely on extra assumptions on the Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) that bypass…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-20 Haipeng Luo , Chen-Yu Wei , Chung-Wei Lee

Reinforcement learning with multinomial logistic (MNL) function approximation has become an important framework due to its flexibility and broad applicability. While existing studies have established regret guarantees under worst-case…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-28 Wonyoung Kim , Min-Hwan Oh , Garud Iyengar , Assaf Zeevi

Finding optimal policies which maximize long term rewards of Markov Decision Processes requires the use of dynamic programming and backward induction to solve the Bellman optimality equation. However, many real-world problems require…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Mridul Agarwal , Vaneet Aggarwal

We study the constrained reinforcement learning problem, in which an agent aims to maximize the expected cumulative reward subject to a constraint on the expected total value of a utility function. In contrast to existing model-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Arnob Ghosh , Xingyu Zhou , Ness Shroff

The linear Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework offers a principled foundation for reinforcement learning (RL) with strong theoretical guarantees and sample efficiency. However, its restrictive assumption-that both transition dynamics…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-06-03 Sinian Zhang , Kaicheng Zhang , Ziping Xu , Tianxi Cai , Doudou Zhou

In many real-life reinforcement learning (RL) problems, deploying new policies is costly. In those scenarios, algorithms must solve exploration (which requires adaptivity) while switching the deployed policy sparsely (which limits…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-27 Dan Qiao , Ming Yin , Yu-Xiang Wang

We study reinforcement learning with delayed state observation, where the agent observes the current state after some random number of time steps. We propose an algorithm that combines the augmentation method and the upper confidence bound…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-05 Harin Lee , Kevin Jamieson

The curse of dimensionality renders Reinforcement Learning (RL) impractical in many real-world settings with exponentially large state and action spaces. Yet, many environments exhibit exploitable structure that can accelerate learning. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Thomas van Vuren , Fiona Sloothaak , Maarten G. Wolf , Jaron Sanders

While there is an extensive body of research on the analysis of Value Iteration (VI) for discounted cumulative-reward MDPs, prior work on analyzing VI for (undiscounted) average-reward MDPs has been limited, and most prior results focus on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Jongmin Lee , Ernest K. Ryu