arXiv Machine Learning

PERRY: Policy Evaluation with Confidence Intervals using Auxiliary Data

arXiv:2507. 20068v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Off-policy evaluation (OPE) methods estimate the value of a new reinforcement learning (RL) policy prior to deployment.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 18

Model-based Bootstrap for Offline Policy Evaluation in Tabular Reinforcement Learning

The paper introduces a model-based bootstrap framework for uncertainty quantification in offline policy evaluation (OPE) within finite-horizon, time-inhomogeneous Markov decision processes. Unlike traditional bootstrap methods that resample entire episodes, this approach regenerates trajectories from an estimated MDP, enabling use of diverse offline data formats such as complete trajectories, transition-level observations, and trajectory fragments. The authors prove bootstrap distributional consistency, asymptotically valid confidence intervals, and consistent variance estimation, and demonstrate through simulations that the method yields tighter confidence intervals and more accurate variance estimates compared to existing techniques.

By Weiwei Wang, Yuqiang Li, Xianyi Wu, Bingyi Jing
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 8

Model-based Bootstrap of Controlled Markov Chains

arXiv:2605. 12410v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We propose and analyze a model-based bootstrap for transition kernels in finite controlled Markov chains (CMCs) with possibly nonstationary or history-dependent control policies, a setting that arises naturally in offline reinforcement learning (RL) when the behavior policy generating the data is unknown.

By Ziwei Su, Imon Banerjee, Diego Klabjan
arXiv AI
Jul 15

From Critic to Confidence: PPO for Language-Based Quantitative Prediction with Confidence Estimation

arXiv:2607. 12687v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: LLMs can perform language-based quantitative prediction from unstructured inputs, but remain susceptible to hallucinations and overconfident errors, making it critical to know not only what a model predicts, but when its predictions can be trusted.

By Mehak Dhaliwal, Rasta Tadayon, Andong Hua, Haewon Jeong, Yao Qin