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We extend the options framework for temporal abstraction in reinforcement learning from discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) to average-reward MDPs. Our contributions include general convergent off-policy inter-option learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Yi Wan , Abhishek Naik , Richard S. Sutton

Recent advances have significantly improved our understanding of the sample complexity of learning in average-reward Markov decision processes (AMDPs) under the generative model. However, much less is known about the constrained…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Yukuan Wei , Xudong Li , Lin F. Yang

Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a key approach for training agents in complex and uncertain environments. Incorporating statistical inference in RL algorithms is essential for understanding and managing uncertainty in model…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-28 Saunak Kumar Panda , Ruiqi Liu , Yisha Xiang

We present the first regret bound for classical online Q-learning in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs), without relying on optimism or bonus terms. We first analyze Boltzmann Q-learning with decaying temperature…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Rahul Singh , Siddharth Chandak , Eric Moulines , Vivek S. Borkar , Nicholas Bambos

Q-learning has long been one of the most popular reinforcement learning algorithms, and theoretical analysis of Q-learning has been an active research topic for decades. Although researches on asymptotic convergence analysis of Q-learning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Han-Dong Lim , Donghwan Lee

Despite the fact that deep reinforcement learning (RL) has surpassed human-level performances in various tasks, it still has several fundamental challenges. First, most RL methods require intensive data from the exploration of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-06 Zhe Xu , Bo Wu , Aditya Ojha , Daniel Neider , Ufuk Topcu

In many iterative optimization methods, fixed-point theory enables the analysis of the convergence rate via the contraction factor associated with the linear approximation of the fixed-point operator. While this factor characterizes the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-06-22 Trung Vu , Raviv Raich

We study infinite-horizon average-reward constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) under the weakly communicating assumption. Our contributions are twofold. First, we establish strong duality for weakly communicating average-reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Kihyun Yu , Beomhan Baek , Dabeen Lee

We study offline multitask reinforcement learning in settings where multiple tasks share a low-rank representation of their action-value functions. In this regime, a learner is provided with fixed datasets collected from several related…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Kausthubh Manda , Raghuram Bharadwaj Diddigi

Time-inhomogeneous finite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDP) are frequently employed to model decision-making in dynamic treatment regimes and other statistical reinforcement learning (RL) scenarios. These fields, especially healthcare…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Elynn Chen , Sai Li , Michael I. Jordan

When the data used for reinforcement learning (RL) are collected by multiple agents in a distributed manner, federated versions of RL algorithms allow collaborative learning without the need for agents to share their local data. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-14 Jiin Woo , Gauri Joshi , Yuejie Chi

We prove new upper and lower bounds for sample complexity of finding an $\epsilon$-optimal policy of an infinite-horizon average-reward Markov decision process (MDP) given access to a generative model. When the mixing time of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Yujia Jin , Aaron Sidford

We consider a reinforcement learning setting in which the deployment environment is different from the training environment. Applying a robust Markov decision processes formulation, we extend the distributionally robust $Q$-learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-02 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si , Jose Blanchet , Zhengyuan Zhou

Although Q-learning is one of the most successful algorithms for finding the best action-value function (and thus the optimal policy) in reinforcement learning, its implementation often suffers from large overestimation of Q-function values…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-13 Huaqing Xiong , Lin Zhao , Yingbin Liang , Wei Zhang

We consider a general asynchronous Stochastic Approximation (SA) scheme featuring a weighted infinity-norm contractive operator, and prove a bound on its finite-time convergence rate on a single trajectory. Additionally, we specialize the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-02-06 Guannan Qu , Adam Wierman

Questions remain on the robustness of data-driven learning methods when crossing the gap from simulation to reality. We utilize weight anchoring, a method known from continual learning, to cultivate and fixate desired behavior in Neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-21 Steffen Gracla , Edgar Beck , Carsten Bockelmann , Armin Dekorsy

$Q$-learning is one of the most fundamental reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. Despite its widespread success in various applications, it is prone to overestimation bias in the $Q$-learning update. To address this issue, double…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Hyunjun Na , Donghwan Lee

When function approximation is deployed in reinforcement learning (RL), the same problem may be formulated in different ways, often by treating a pre-processing step as a part of the environment or as part of the agent. As a consequence,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-02 Nan Jiang

Recently, model-free reinforcement learning has attracted research attention due to its simplicity, memory and computation efficiency, and the flexibility to combine with function approximation. In this paper, we propose Exploration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-10 Mehdi Jafarnia-Jahromi , Chen-Yu Wei , Rahul Jain , Haipeng Luo

We propose a new simple and natural algorithm for learning the optimal Q-value function of a discounted-cost Markov Decision Process (MDP) when the transition kernels are unknown. Unlike the classical learning algorithms for MDPs, such as…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-01-31 Dileep Kalathil , Vivek S. Borkar , Rahul Jain