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While numerous works have focused on devising efficient algorithms for reinforcement learning (RL) with uniformly bounded rewards, it remains an open question whether sample or time-efficient algorithms for RL with large state-action space…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-08 Jiayi Huang , Han Zhong , Liwei Wang , Lin F. Yang

In the classical multi-armed bandit problem, instance-dependent algorithms attain improved performance on "easy" problems with a gap between the best and second-best arm. Are similar guarantees possible for contextual bandits? While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-08 Dylan J. Foster , Alexander Rakhlin , David Simchi-Levi , Yunzong Xu

We consider the problem of learning in adversarial Markov decision processes [MDPs] with an oblivious adversary in a full-information setting. The agent interacts with an environment during $T$ episodes, each of which consists of $H$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-06 Daniil Tiapkin , Evgenii Chzhen , Gilles Stoltz

We give a simple optimistic algorithm for which it is easy to derive regret bounds of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{t_{\rm mix} SAT})$ after $T$ steps in uniformly ergodic Markov decision processes with $S$ states, $A$ actions, and mixing time parameter…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-23 Ronald Ortner

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Andrew Wagenmaker , Max Simchowitz , Kevin Jamieson

We study reinforcement learning for continuous-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) in the finite-horizon episodic setting. In contrast to discrete-time MDPs, the inter-transition times of a continuous-time MDP are exponentially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Xuefeng Gao , Xun Yu Zhou

We present regret minimization algorithms for the contextual multi-armed bandit (CMAB) problem over $K$ actions in the presence of delayed feedback, a scenario where loss observations arrive with delays chosen by an adversary. As a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-13 Orin Levy , Liad Erez , Alon Cohen , Yishay Mansour

In this paper, we propose new problem-independent lower bounds on the sample complexity and regret in episodic MDPs, with a particular focus on the non-stationary case in which the transition kernel is allowed to change in each stage of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-09 Omar Darwiche Domingues , Pierre Ménard , Emilie Kaufmann , Michal Valko

The contextual combinatorial semi-bandit problem with linear payoff functions is a decision-making problem in which a learner chooses a set of arms with the feature vectors in each round under given constraints so as to maximize the sum of…

In this paper, we study the contextual multinomial logit (MNL) bandit problem in which a learning agent sequentially selects an assortment based on contextual information, and user feedback follows an MNL choice model. There has been a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-17 Joongkyu Lee , Min-hwan Oh

Variance-dependent regret bounds for linear contextual bandits, which improve upon the classical $\tilde{O}(d\sqrt{K})$ regret bound to $\tilde{O}(d\sqrt{\sum_{k=1}^K\sigma_k^2})$, where $d$ is the context dimension, $K$ is the number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-18 Jiafan He , Quanquan Gu

A central issue lying at the heart of online reinforcement learning (RL) is data efficiency. While a number of recent works achieved asymptotically minimal regret in online RL, the optimality of these results is only guaranteed in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-30 Zihan Zhang , Yuxin Chen , Jason D. Lee , Simon S. Du

We consider undiscounted reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs) where both the reward functions and the state-transition probabilities may vary (gradually or abruptly) over time. For this problem setting, we propose an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-11 Pratik Gajane , Ronald Ortner , Peter Auer

This paper studies model-based reinforcement learning (RL) for regret minimization. We focus on finite-horizon episodic RL where the transition model $P$ belongs to a known family of models $\mathcal{P}$, a special case of which is when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-02 Alex Ayoub , Zeyu Jia , Csaba Szepesvari , Mengdi Wang , Lin F. Yang

The optimized certainty equivalent (OCE) is a family of risk measures that cover important examples such as entropic risk, conditional value-at-risk and mean-variance models. In this paper, we propose a new episodic risk-sensitive…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-09 Wenhao Xu , Xuefeng Gao , Xuedong He

Reinforcement learning (RL) has traditionally been understood from an episodic perspective; the concept of non-episodic RL, where there is no restart and therefore no reliable recovery, remains elusive. A fundamental question in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-31 Shuang Liu , Hao Su

We consider online reinforcement learning in episodic Markov decision process (MDP) with unknown transition function and stochastic rewards drawn from some fixed but unknown distribution. The learner aims to learn the optimal policy and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Vincent Leon , S. Rasoul Etesami

The cross-learning contextual bandit problem with graphical feedback has recently attracted significant attention. In this setting, there is a contextual bandit with a feedback graph over the arms, and pulling an arm reveals the loss for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Ruiyuan Huang , Zengfeng Huang

In this paper, we investigate the problem of \textit{episodic reinforcement learning} with quantum oracles for state evolution. To this end, we propose an \textit{Upper Confidence Bound} (UCB) based quantum algorithmic framework to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-20 Bhargav Ganguly , Yulian Wu , Di Wang , Vaneet Aggarwal

This work studies online episodic tabular Markov decision processes (MDPs) with known transitions and develops best-of-both-worlds algorithms that achieve refined data-dependent regret bounds in the adversarial regime and variance-dependent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Mingyi Li , Taira Tsuchiya , Kenji Yamanishi