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We present a method for solving implicit (factored) Markov decision processes (MDPs) with very large state spaces. We introduce a property of state space partitions which we call epsilon-homogeneity. Intuitively, an epsilon-homogeneous…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-02-08 Thomas L. Dean , Robert Givan , Sonia Leach

We study regret minimization in finite horizon tabular Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the constraints of differential privacy (DP). This is motivated by the widespread applications of reinforcement learning (RL) in real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-21 Sayak Ray Chowdhury , Xingyu Zhou

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (minimize…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-07-08 Mahmoud El Chamie , Behcet Acikmese

Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Sourav Ganguly , Kishan Panaganti , Arnob Ghosh , Adam Wierman

A basic model in sequential decision making is the Markov decision process (MDP), which is extended to Robust MDPs (RMDPs) by allowing uncertainty in transition probabilities and optimizing against the worst-case transition probabilities…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Ali Asadi , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Alipasha Montaseri , Ali Shafiee

Safety and robustness are two desired properties for any reinforcement learning algorithm. CMDPs can handle additional safety constraints and RMDPs can perform well under model uncertainties. In this paper, we propose to unite these two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-21 Reazul Hasan Russel , Mouhacine Benosman , Jeroen Van Baar , Radu Corcodel

Markov decision processes (MDPs) is viewed as an optimization of an objective function over certain linear operators over general function spaces. A new existence result is established for the existence of optimal policies in general MDPs,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Abhishek Gupta , Aditya Mahajan

Safe exploration is crucial for the real-world application of reinforcement learning (RL). Previous works consider the safe exploration problem as Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP), where the policies are being optimized under…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-12 Hao Sun , Ziping Xu , Meng Fang , Zhenghao Peng , Jiadong Guo , Bo Dai , Bolei Zhou

In several reinforcement learning (RL) scenarios, mainly in security settings, there may be adversaries trying to interfere with the reward generating process. In this paper, we introduce Threatened Markov Decision Processes (TMDPs), which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-28 Victor Gallego , Roi Naveiro , David Rios Insua

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the defacto frame-work for sequential decision making in the presence ofstochastic uncertainty. A classical optimization criterion forMDPs is to maximize the expected discounted-sum pay-off, which…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-02-28 Tomas Brazdil , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Petr Novotny , Jiri Vahala

Influence Blocking Maximization (IBM) aims to select a positive seed set to suppress the spread of negative influence. However, existing IBM methods focus solely on maximizing blocking effectiveness, overlooking fairness across communities.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Qiangpeng Fang , Jilong Shi , Xiaobin Rui , Jian Zhang , Zhixiao Wang

We introduce a new formulation of the Hidden Parameter Markov Decision Process (HiP-MDP), a framework for modeling families of related tasks using low-dimensional latent embeddings. Our new framework correctly models the joint uncertainty…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-11-01 Taylor Killian , Samuel Daulton , George Konidaris , Finale Doshi-Velez

In this paper we provide faster algorithms for approximately solving discounted Markov Decision Processes in multiple parameter regimes. Given a discounted Markov Decision Process (DMDP) with $|S|$ states, $|A|$ actions, discount factor…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-12-24 Aaron Sidford , Mengdi Wang , Xian Wu , Yinyu Ye

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can be used to provide personalized services, which rely on users' private and sensitive data. To protect the users' privacy, privacy-preserving RL algorithms are in demand. In this paper, we study RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-20 Chonghua Liao , Jiafan He , Quanquan Gu

Ethereum 2.0 is a major upgrade to improve its scalability, throughput, and security. In this version, RANDAO is the scheme to randomly select the users who propose, confirm blocks, and get rewards. However, a vulnerability, referred to as…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-03-15 Do Hai Son , Tran Thi Thuy Quynh , Le Quang Minh

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (or minimize…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-07-07 Mahmoud El Chamie , Behcet Acikmese

We propose and study a general framework for regularized Markov decision processes (MDPs) where the goal is to find an optimal policy that maximizes the expected discounted total reward plus a policy regularization term. The extant…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-10-22 Xiang Li , Wenhao Yang , Zhihua Zhang

A recent goal in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework is to choose a sequence of actions or a policy to maximize the reward collected or minimize the regret incurred in a finite time horizon. For several RL problems in operation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-18 K J Prabuchandran , Tejas Bodas , Theja Tulabandhula

Large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) require planning algorithms with runtime independent of the number of states of the MDP. We consider the planning problem in MDPs using linear value function approximation with only weak…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-14 Roshan Shariff , Csaba Szepesvári

We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Shuchi Chawla , Dimitris Christou , Amit Harlev , Ziv Scully