arXiv AI
Oct 16

V-SHARE: Provable Convergence Guarantees for Advantage-based Algorithms

V‑SHARE is an advantage‑based value‑learning algorithm that blends cross‑action value sharing with an importance‑weighted Bellman‑residual correction. The paper presents the first full theoretical analysis of such an algorithm, offering both asymptotic convergence and finite‑sample guarantees. It also introduces schedules that balance deterministic contraction against importance‑weighting noise, and a two‑timescale analysis that eliminates a residual‑weight threshold while maintaining convergence.

By Kintan Saha, Hamed Masoudi, Xinyi Sheng, Dominik Baumann, Joni Pajarinen, Arsenii Mustafin
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

Decision-Centered Abstractions via Orthogonal Estimation of Difference-of-Q Functions

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