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We present a distributional approach to theoretical analyses of reinforcement learning algorithms for constant step-sizes. We demonstrate its effectiveness by presenting simple and unified proofs of convergence for a variety of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-30 Philip Amortila , Doina Precup , Prakash Panangaden , Marc G. Bellemare

We consider the problem of learning a set of probability distributions from the empirical Bellman dynamics in distributional reinforcement learning (RL), a class of state-of-the-art methods that estimate the distribution, as opposed to only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-10 Thanh Tang Nguyen , Sunil Gupta , Svetha Venkatesh

Multi-task representation learning (MTRL) is an approach that learns shared latent representations across related tasks, facilitating collaborative learning that improves the overall learning efficiency. This paper studies MTRL for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Yaoze Guo , Shana Moothedath

This study introduces a mathematical framework to investigate the viability and reachability of production systems under constraints. We develop a model that incorporates key decision variables, such as pricing policy, quality investment,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-16 Achraf Bouhmady , Mustapha Serhani , Nadia Raissi

In this paper, we study a time-inconsistent stochastic optimal control problem with a recursive cost functional by a multi-person hierarchical differential game approach. An equilibrium strategy of this problem is constructed and a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-06-13 Qingmeng Wei , Jiongmin Yong , Zhiyong Yu

Distributionally robust reinforcement learning (DRRL) focuses on designing policies that achieve good performance under model uncertainties. The goal is to maximize the worst-case long-term discounted reward, where the data for RL comes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Saptarshi Mandal , Yashaswini Murthy , R. Srikant

We study a robust alternative to empirical risk minimization called distributionally robust learning (DRL), in which one learns to perform against an adversary who can choose the data distribution from a specified set of distributions. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-19 Charlie Frogner , Sebastian Claici , Edward Chien , Justin Solomon

Risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL) is crucial for maintaining reliable performance in high-stakes applications. While traditional RL methods aim to learn a point estimate of the random cumulative cost, distributional RL (DRL) seeks…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-03 Minheng Xiao , Xian Yu , Lei Ying

To date, distributional reinforcement learning (distributional RL) methods have exclusively focused on the discounted setting, where an agent aims to optimize a discounted sum of rewards over time. In this work, we extend distributional RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Juan Sebastian Rojas , Chi-Guhn Lee

In this paper, we study the finite-sample statistical rates of distributional temporal difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation. The purpose of distributional TD learning is to estimate the return distribution of a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-18 Kaicheng Jin , Yang Peng , Jiansheng Yang , Zhihua Zhang

Policy iteration is a widely used technique to solve the Hamilton Jacobi Bellman (HJB) equation, which arises from nonlinear optimal feedback control theory. Its convergence analysis has attracted much attention in the unconstrained case.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-19 Sudeep Kundu , Karl Kunisch

In this paper, we study the finite-sample statistical rates of distributional temporal difference (TD) learning with linear function approximation. The aim of distributional TD learning is to estimate the return distribution of a discounted…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-14 Yang Peng , Kaicheng Jin , Liangyu Zhang , Zhihua Zhang

In reinforcement learning (RL), it is often advantageous to consider additional constraints on the action space to ensure safety or action relevance. Existing work on such action-constrained RL faces challenges regarding effective policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Roland Stolz , Michael Eichelbeck , Matthias Althoff

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

We introduce a novel class of algorithms to efficiently approximate the unknown return distributions in policy evaluation problems from distributional reinforcement learning (DRL). The proposed distributional dynamic programming algorithms…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-07-22 Julian Gerstenberg , Ralph Neininger , Denis Spiegel

We study the problem of optimal portfolio selection under stochastic volatility within a continuous time reinforcement learning framework with portfolio constraints. Exploration is modeled through entropy-regularized relaxed controls, where…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2026-04-27 Thai Nguyen , Pertiny Nkuize

Many optimal control problems are formulated as two point boundary value problems (TPBVPs) with conditions of optimality derived from the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations. In most cases, it is challenging to solve HJBs due to the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-07-25 Sixiong You , Ran Dai , Ping Lu

Computing optimal feedback controls for nonlinear systems generally requires solving Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations, which are notoriously difficult when the state dimension is large. Existing strategies for high-dimensional…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-04-09 Tenavi Nakamura-Zimmerer , Qi Gong , Wei Kang

Distributional approaches to value-based reinforcement learning model the entire distribution of returns, rather than just their expected values, and have recently been shown to yield state-of-the-art empirical performance. This was…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-02-23 Mark Rowland , Marc G. Bellemare , Will Dabney , Rémi Munos , Yee Whye Teh

The distributional reinforcement learning (RL) approach advocates for representing the complete probability distribution of the random return instead of only modelling its expectation. A distributional RL algorithm may be characterised by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-20 Thibaut Théate , Antoine Wehenkel , Adrien Bolland , Gilles Louppe , Damien Ernst