We establish a global finite-sample guarantee for synchronous quantile temporal-difference learning (QTD) in tabular distributional reinforcement learning. The proof separates two stability mechanisms.
arXiv:2608. 14408v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study online statistical inference for functionals of the return distribution under a fixed policy.
By Yang Peng, Liangyu Zhang
arXiv:2608. 27313v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We establish a global finite-sample guarantee for synchronous quantile temporal-difference learning (QTD) in tabular distributional reinforcement learning.
By Zijie Cheng, Xiang Li, Yang Peng, Zhihua Zhang
arXiv:2608. 27313v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Quantile temporal-difference learning (QTD) is an effective method for learning return distributions through quantile approximation, yet its finite-time behavior remains poorly understood.
By Zijie Cheng, Xiang Li, Yang Peng, Zhihua Zhang
arXiv:2505.13299v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: This paper considers the estimation of quantiles via a smoothed version of the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm. By smoothing the...
By Likai Chen, Georg Keilbar, Wei Biao Wu
arXiv:2607. 08444v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In this paper, we study quantile-based distributional reinforcement learning from the perspective of statistical efficiency.
By Zijie Cheng, Yang Peng, Zhihua Zhang
arXiv:2606. 15048v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Diffusion models are typically trained with objectives that focus on local denoising targets at individual time steps (or adjacent pairs), which do not enforce consistency between predictions along the denoising trajectory.
By Qizhen Ying, Yangchen Pan, Victor Adrian Prisacariu, Junfeng Wen
The paper introduces Deep-BQRL, a model‑free distributional reinforcement‑learning framework that extends buffered‑quantile learning to neural function approximation. It learns conditional return quantiles from sampled transitions, constructs buffered action scores, and uses ensemble disagreement for exploration, enabling risk‑sensitive decision‑making without explicit return‑law planning. Experiments on asset‑selling and slippery FrozenLake show that Deep‑BQRL achieves smaller mean cumulative point‑quantile policy gaps than PPO and TRPO, while illustrating interpretable risk‑sensitive stopping decisions.
By Mohammad Alipour-vaezi, Sajad Khodadadian
The paper introduces state abstractions that preserve the difference of Q‑functions for offline reinforcement learning, aiming to exclude irrelevant dynamics from rich state data. It proposes a dynamic generalization of the R‑learner that uses orthogonal estimation and sparse learning to estimate the Q‑function contrast, achieving faster convergence and consistency under a margin condition. Experiments on simulated and simulator‑augmented real data show variance reductions and demonstrate that the necessary information for sequential decision‑making can be smaller than that required for full state prediction.
By Defu Cao, Angela Zhou
arXiv:2509. 10303v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Online reinforcement learning (RL) approaches have demonstrated strong performance on Job Shop Scheduling (JSP) and Flexible JSP (FJSP) problems by learning scheduling policies through direct interaction with simulated environments.
By Jesse van Remmerden, Zaharah Bukhsh, Yingqian Zhang
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:2606. 14801v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Flow-matching and diffusion policies are expressive action generators, but optimizing them with temporal-difference reinforcement learning (RL) remains difficult.
By Yifan Ruan, Chenyang Cao, Andreas Burger, Ali Pesaranghader, Kaveh Kamali, Jaehong Kim, Nandita Vijaykumar, Alan Aspuru-Guzik, Igor Gilitschenski, Nicholas Rhinehart