Related papers: Sample Complexity Bounds for Stochastic Shortest P…
Many popular reinforcement learning problems (e.g., navigation in a maze, some Atari games, mountain car) are instances of the episodic setting under its stochastic shortest path (SSP) formulation, where an agent has to achieve a goal state…
In this paper we propose two algorithms in the tabular setting and an algorithm for the function approximation setting for the Stochastic Shortest Path (SSP) problem. SSP problems form an important class of problems in Reinforcement…
The theory of reinforcement learning has focused on two fundamental problems: achieving low regret, and identifying $\epsilon$-optimal policies. While a simple reduction allows one to apply a low-regret algorithm to obtain an…
We study a fundamental stochastic selection problem involving $n$ independent random variables, each of which can be queried at some cost. Given a tolerance level $\delta$, the goal is to find a value that is $\delta$-approximately minimum…
Sample inefficiency is a long-lasting problem in reinforcement learning (RL). The state-of-the-art estimates the optimal action values while it usually involves an extensive search over the state-action space and unstable optimization.…
Stochastic sequential decision making often requires hierarchical structure in the problem where each high-level action should be further planned with primitive states and actions. In addition, many real-world applications require a plan…
We study the typical learning properties of the recently introduced Soft Margin Classifiers (SMCs), learning realizable and unrealizable tasks, with the tools of Statistical Mechanics. We derive analytically the behaviour of the learning…
In the Best-$k$-Arm problem, we are given $n$ stochastic bandit arms, each associated with an unknown reward distribution. We are required to identify the $k$ arms with the largest means by taking as few samples as possible. In this paper,…
In this study, we derive Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) bounds on the asymptotic sample-complexity for RL within the infinite-horizon Markov Decision Process (MDP) setting that are sharper than those in existing literature. The…
In this paper, we consider the problem of replicable realizable PAC learning. We construct a particularly hard learning problem and show a sample complexity lower bound with a close to $(\log|H|)^{3/2}$ dependence on the size of the…
We compute the integral of a function or the expectation of a random variable with minimal cost and use, for our new algorithm and for upper bounds of the complexity, i.i.d. samples. Under certain assumptions it is possible to select a…
Solving Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) is a recurrent task in engineering. Even though it is known that solutions for minimizing the infinite horizon expected reward can be found in polynomial time using Linear Programming techniques,…
Social and real-world considerations such as robustness, fairness, social welfare and multi-agent tradeoffs have given rise to multi-distribution learning paradigms, such as collaborative learning, group distributionally robust…
Practitioners often use data from a randomized controlled trial to learn a treatment assignment policy that can be deployed on a target population. A recurring concern in doing so is that, even if the randomized trial was well-executed…
We consider the problem of estimating the expected value of information (the knowledge gradient) for Bayesian learning problems where the belief model is nonlinear in the parameters. Our goal is to maximize some metric, while simultaneously…
Single Source Shortest Paths ($\textrm{SSSP}$) is among the most well-studied problems in computer science. In the incremental (resp. decremental) setting, the goal is to maintain distances from a fixed source in a graph undergoing edge…
We study the sample complexity of reducing reinforcement learning to a sequence of empirical risk minimization problems over the policy space. Such reductions-based algorithms exhibit local convergence in the function space, as opposed to…
We define the problem of linear Contextual Stochastic Shortest Path (CSSP), where at the beginning of each episode, the learner observes an adversarially chosen context that determines the MDP through a fixed but unknown linear function.…
Motivated by applications where impatience is pervasive and evaluation times are uncertain, we study a selection model where options may expire at an unknown point in time and evaluation times are stochastic. Initially, the decision-maker…
This work establishes a new upper bound on the number of samples sufficient for PAC learning in the realizable case. The bound matches known lower bounds up to numerical constant factors. This solves a long-standing open problem on the…