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We study the problem of nonepisodic reinforcement learning (RL) for nonlinear dynamical systems, where the system dynamics are unknown and the RL agent has to learn from a single trajectory, i.e., without resets. We propose Nonepisodic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-12 Bhavya Sukhija , Lenart Treven , Florian Dörfler , Stelian Coros , Andreas Krause

One approach to improving the running time of kernel-based machine learning methods is to build a small sketch of the input and use it in lieu of the full kernel matrix in the machine learning task of interest. Here, we describe a version…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-11-10 Ahmed El Alaoui , Michael W. Mahoney

We present simple, user-friendly bounds for the expected operator norm of a random kernel matrix under general conditions on the kernel function $k(\cdot,\cdot)$. Our approach uses decoupling results for U-statistics and the non-commutative…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-07 Chiraag Kaushik , Justin Romberg , Vidya Muthukumar

Learning a predictive model of the mean return, or value function, plays a critical role in many reinforcement learning algorithms. Distributional reinforcement learning (DRL) has been shown to improve performance by modeling the value…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Ju-Seung Byun , Andrew Perrault

Recent studies have shown that episodic reinforcement learning (RL) is no harder than bandits when the total reward is bounded by $1$, and proved regret bounds that have a polylogarithmic dependence on the planning horizon $H$. However, it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-16 Kaixuan Ji , Qingyue Zhao , Jiafan He , Weitong Zhang , Quanquan Gu

Regularized kernel methods such as, e.g., support vector machines and least-squares support vector regression constitute an important class of standard learning algorithms in machine learning. Theoretical investigations concerning…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-03-21 Robert Hable

We develop a framework for function classes generated by parametric ridge kernels: one-dimensional kernels composed with affine projections and averaged over a parameter measure. The induced kernels are positive definite, and the resulting…

Functional Analysis · Mathematics 2025-08-26 James Tian

We propose an optimal algorithm for estimating conditional average treatment effects (CATEs) when response functions lie in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). We study settings in which the contrast function is structurally simpler…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-25 Seok-Jin Kim

Distributional reinforcement learning (RL) has proven useful in multiple benchmarks as it enables approximating the full distribution of returns and extracts rich feedback from environment samples. The commonly used quantile regression…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Sami Jullien , Romain Deffayet , Jean-Michel Renders , Paul Groth , Maarten de Rijke

Many works have developed no-regret algorithms for contextual bandits with function approximation, where the mean reward function over context-action pairs belongs to a function class. Although there are many approaches to this problem, one…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Aldo Pacchiano

While reinforcement learning algorithms provide automated acquisition of optimal policies, practical application of such methods requires a number of design decisions, such as manually designing reward functions that not only define the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-29 Tim G. J. Rudner , Vitchyr H. Pong , Rowan McAllister , Yarin Gal , Sergey Levine

A core challenge in causal inference is how to extrapolate long term effects, of possibly continuous actions, from short term experimental data. It arises in artificial intelligence: the long term consequences of continuous actions may be…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-01-03 Rahul Singh , Hannah Zhou

This paper introduces an approach to Reinforcement Learning Algorithm by comparing their immediate rewards using a variation of Q-Learning algorithm. Unlike the conventional Q-Learning, the proposed algorithm compares current reward with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2010-09-15 Punit Pandey , Deepshikha Pandey , Shishir Kumar

The effectiveness of non-parametric, kernel-based methods for function estimation comes at the price of high computational complexity, which hinders their applicability in adaptive, model-based control. Motivated by approximation techniques…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-03-17 Anna Scampicchio , Elena Arcari , Melanie N. Zeilinger

The lack of sufficient flexibility is the key bottleneck of kernel-based learning that relies on manually designed, pre-given, and non-trainable kernels. To enhance kernel flexibility, this paper introduces the concept of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-10 Fan He , Mingzhen He , Lei Shi , Xiaolin Huang , Johan A. K. Suykens

We propose an optimistic model-based algorithm, dubbed SMRL, for finite-horizon episodic reinforcement learning (RL) when the transition model is specified by exponential family distributions with $d$ parameters and the reward is bounded…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-10 Gene Li , Junbo Li , Anmol Kabra , Nathan Srebro , Zhaoran Wang , Zhuoran Yang

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful paradigm in Artificial Intelligence (AI), enabling agents to learn optimal behaviors through interactions with their environments. Drawing from the foundations of trial and error, RL…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-04 Majid Ghasemi , Amir Hossein Moosavi , Dariush Ebrahimi

In this work, we address the problem of determining reliable policies in reinforcement learning (RL), with a focus on optimization under uncertainty and the need for performance guarantees. While classical RL algorithms aim at maximizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Nadir Farhi

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is typically formulated as maximizing entropy subject to matching the distribution of expert trajectories. Classical (dual-ascent) IRL guarantees monotonic performance improvement but requires fully…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Anish Diwan , Davide Tateo , Christopher E. Mower , Haitham Bou-Ammar , Jan Peters , Oleg Arenz

Recent work has demonstrated that problems-- particularly imitation learning and structured prediction-- where a learner's predictions influence the input-distribution it is tested on can be naturally addressed by an interactive approach…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-06-24 Stephane Ross , J. Andrew Bagnell