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We study online reinforcement learning in linear Markov decision processes with adversarial losses and bandit feedback, without prior knowledge on transitions or access to simulators. We introduce two algorithms that achieve improved regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-19 Haolin Liu , Chen-Yu Wei , Julian Zimmert

We study online learning in two-player uninformed Markov games, where the opponent's actions and policies are unobserved. In this setting, Tian et al. (2021) show that achieving no-external-regret is impossible without incurring an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Junyan Liu , Haipeng Luo , Zihan Zhang , Lillian J. Ratliff

Online learning and model reference adaptive control have many interesting intersections. One area where they differ however is in how the algorithms are analyzed and what objective or metric is used to discriminate "good" algorithms from…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-01-24 Travis E. Gibson , Sawal Acharya

In this paper, we study the offline and online settings of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) with KL-regularization -- a widely used objective function in large language model alignment -- under the $\epsilon$ local…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Yulian Wu , Rushil Thareja , Praneeth Vepakomma , Francesco Orabona

This paper studies the online optimal control problem with time-varying convex stage costs for a time-invariant linear dynamical system, where a finite lookahead window of accurate predictions of the stage costs are available at each time.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-23 Yingying Li , Xin Chen , Na Li

Online learning is a powerful tool for analyzing iterative algorithms. However, the classic adversarial setup sometimes fails to capture certain regularity in online problems in practice. Motivated by this, we establish a new setup, called…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-06 Ching-An Cheng , Jonathan Lee , Ken Goldberg , Byron Boots

Online learning aims to perform nearly as well as the best hypothesis in hindsight. For some hypothesis classes, though, even finding the best hypothesis offline is challenging. In such offline cases, local search techniques are often…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-06-18 Michael Bowling , Martin Zinkevich

Motivated by alternating learning dynamics in two-player games, a recent work by Cevher et al.(2024) shows that $o(\sqrt{T})$ alternating regret is possible for any $T$-round adversarial Online Linear Optimization (OLO) problem, and left as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Soumita Hait , Ping Li , Haipeng Luo , Mengxiao Zhang

We study an online linear optimization (OLO) problem in which the learner is provided access to $K$ "hint" vectors in each round prior to making a decision. In this setting, we devise an algorithm that obtains logarithmic regret whenever…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-08 Aditya Bhaskara , Ashok Cutkosky , Ravi Kumar , Manish Purohit

Regularized online learning is widely used in machine learning applications. In online learning, performing exact minimization ($i.e.,$ implicit update) is known to be beneficial to the numerical stability and structure of solution. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-08 Chaobing Song , Ji Liu , Han Liu , Yong Jiang , Tong Zhang

This work focuses on the setting of dynamic regret in the context of online learning with full information. In particular, we analyze regret bounds with respect to the temporal variability of the loss functions. By assuming that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-16 Nicolò Campolongo , Francesco Orabona

We present two Policy Gradient-based algorithms with general parametrization in the context of infinite-horizon average reward Markov Decision Process (MDP). The first one employs Implicit Gradient Transport for variance reduction, ensuring…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-13 Swetha Ganesh , Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

In this paper we prove the efficacy of a simple greedy algorithm for a finite horizon online resource allocation/matching problem, when the corresponding static planning linear program (SPP) exhibits a non-degeneracy condition called the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Varun Gupta

Regret minimization is treated as the golden rule in the traditional study of online learning. However, regret minimization algorithms tend to converge to the static optimum, thus being suboptimal for changing environments. To address this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-07 Lijun Zhang , Shiyin Lu , Tianbao Yang

Although online convex optimization (OCO) under arbitrary delays has received increasing attention recently, previous studies focus on stationary environments with the goal of minimizing static regret. In this paper, we investigate the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Yuanyu Wan , Chang Yao , Yitao Ma , Mingli Song , Lijun Zhang

In online inverse linear optimization, a learner observes time-varying sets of feasible actions and an agent's optimal actions, selected by solving linear optimization over the feasible actions. The learner sequentially makes predictions of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-23 Shinsaku Sakaue , Taira Tsuchiya , Han Bao , Taihei Oki

We study a two-sided market, wherein, price-sensitive heterogeneous customers and servers arrive and join their respective queues. A compatible customer-server pair can then be matched by the platform, at which point, they leave the system.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-17 Zixian Yang , Sushil Mahavir Varma , Lei Ying

Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown empirical success in various real world settings with complex models and large state-action spaces. The existing analytical results, however, typically focus on settings with a small number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-15 Sattar Vakili , Julia Olkhovskaya

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has become a cornerstone technique for post-training large language models. While most existing approaches rely on the reverse KL-regularization, recent empirical studies have begun…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Di Wu , Chengshuai Shi , Jing Yang , Cong Shen

We revisit the Follow the Regularized Leader (FTRL) framework for Online Convex Optimization (OCO) over compact sets, focusing on achieving dynamic regret guarantees. Prior work has highlighted the framework's limitations in dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Naram Mhaisen , George Iosifidis