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A fundamental problem in adversarial machine learning is to quantify how much training data is needed in the presence of evasion attacks. In this paper we address this issue within the framework of PAC learning, focusing on the class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-13 Pascale Gourdeau , Varun Kanade , Marta Kwiatkowska , James Worrell

We investigate the exploration of an unknown environment when no reward function is provided. Building on the incremental exploration setting introduced by Lim and Auer [1], we define the objective of learning the set of $\epsilon$-optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Jean Tarbouriech , Matteo Pirotta , Michal Valko , Alessandro Lazaric

In high stake applications, active experimentation may be considered too risky and thus data are often collected passively. While in simple cases, such as in bandits, passive and active data collection are similarly effective, the price of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Chenjun Xiao , Ilbin Lee , Bo Dai , Dale Schuurmans , Csaba Szepesvari

We study the problem of learning general (i.e., not necessarily homogeneous) halfspaces with Random Classification Noise under the Gaussian distribution. We establish nearly-matching algorithmic and Statistical Query (SQ) lower bound…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-18 Ilias Diakonikolas , Jelena Diakonikolas , Daniel M. Kane , Puqian Wang , Nikos Zarifis

The practicality of reinforcement learning algorithms has been limited due to poor scaling with respect to the problem size, as the sample complexity of learning an $\epsilon$-optimal policy is $\tilde{\Omega}\left(|S||A|H^3 /…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-12 Tyler Sam , Yudong Chen , Christina Lee Yu

We revisit the identification of an $\varepsilon$-optimal policy in average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDP). In such MDPs, two measures of complexity have appeared in the literature: the diameter, $D$, and the optimal bias span, $H$,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-28 Adrienne Tuynman , Rémy Degenne , Emilie Kaufmann

In this paper, we study a class of stochastic optimization problems, referred to as the \emph{Conditional Stochastic Optimization} (CSO), in the form of $\min_{x \in \mathcal{X}} \EE_{\xi}f_\xi\Big({\EE_{\eta|\xi}[g_\eta(x,\xi)]}\Big)$,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-08-21 Yifan Hu , Xin Chen , Niao He

In the setting of nonparametric regression, we propose and study a combination of stochastic gradient methods with Nystr\"om subsampling, allowing multiple passes over the data and mini-batches. Generalization error bounds for the studied…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-10-24 Junhong Lin , Lorenzo Rosasco

Several approximate policy iteration schemes without value functions, which focus on policy representation using classifiers and address policy learning as a supervised learning problem, have been proposed recently. Finding good policies…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2009-12-30 Christos Dimitrakakis , Michail G. Lagoudakis

Sample complexity bounds are a common performance metric in the Reinforcement Learning literature. In the discounted cost, infinite horizon setting, all of the known bounds have a factor that is a polynomial in $1/(1-\gamma)$, where $\gamma…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-09 Adithya M. Devraj , Sean P. Meyn

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning in finite discounted MDPs, where a generative model of the MDP is assumed to be available. We consider a family or risk measures called the optimized certainty equivalent (OCE), which includes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Oliver Mortensen , Mohammad Sadegh Talebi

Stackelberg games (SGs) constitute the most fundamental and acclaimed models of strategic interactions involving some form of commitment. Moreover, they form the basis of more elaborate models of this kind, such as, e.g., Bayesian…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-14 Francesco Bacchiocchi , Matteo Bollini , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

Stochastic shortest path (SSP) is a well-known problem in planning and control, in which an agent has to reach a goal state in minimum total expected cost. In this paper we present the adversarial SSP model that also accounts for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-06 Aviv Rosenberg , Yishay Mansour

The minimum-cost flow problem is a classic problem in combinatorial optimization with various applications. Several pseudo-polynomial, polynomial, and strongly polynomial algorithms have been developed in the past decades, and it seems that…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-09-16 Tobias Brunsch , Kamiel Cornelissen , Bodo Manthey , Heiko Röglin , Clemens Rösner

This paper is concerned with the problem of policy evaluation with linear function approximation in discounted infinite horizon Markov decision processes. We investigate the sample complexities required to guarantee a predefined estimation…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-03 Gen Li , Weichen Wu , Yuejie Chi , Cong Ma , Alessandro Rinaldo , Yuting Wei

We study best-policy identification for finite-horizon risk-sensitive reinforcement learning under the entropic risk measure. Recent work established a constant gap in the exponential horizon dependence between lower and upper bounds on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Amer Essakine , Claire Vernade

Recently, there has been significant progress in understanding reinforcement learning in discounted infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) by deriving tight sample complexity bounds. However, in many real-world applications, an…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2016-05-12 Christoph Dann , Emma Brunskill

We consider the question introduced by \cite{Mason2020} of identifying all the $\varepsilon$-optimal arms in a finite stochastic multi-armed bandit with Gaussian rewards. We give two lower bounds on the sample complexity of any algorithm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-07 Aymen Al Marjani , Tomáš Kocák , Aurélien Garivier

Stochastic Shortest Path problems (SSPs) are traditionally solved by computing each state's cost-to-go by applying Bellman backups. A Bellman backup updates a state's cost-to-go by iterating through every applicable action, computing the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Johannes Schmalz , Felipe Trevizan

This paper investigates the computational complexity of reinforcement learning in a novel linear function approximation regime, termed partial $q^{\pi}$-realizability. In this framework, the objective is to learn an $\epsilon$-optimal…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Shayan Karimi , Xiaoqi Tan