In reinforcement learning, advantage-based value-learning methods, unlike standard Q-learning, share information across actions by decomposing the action-value function into a state-dependent value co...
arXiv:2607. 08340v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Q-learning is a fundamental algorithm in reinforcement learning (RL) for solving discounted Markov decision processes (MDPs) when the transition kernel is unknown.
By Donghwan Lee
arXiv:2607. 28916v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multistep credit assignment is critical for sample-efficient reinforcement learning, yet managing off-policy bias in Q-learning remains a fundamental challenge.
By Brett Daley
arXiv:2606. 29806v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Action-values are foundational to many control algorithms such as Q-learning.
By Prabhat Nagarajan, Brett Daley, Martha White, Marlos C. Machado
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:2608. 02034v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-step returns accelerate reward propagation in off-policy reinforcement learning, but couple the evaluation of each decision to the suboptimal logged actions that follow it, inducing a pessimistic bias that grows with the horizon.
By Abdelghani Ghanem, Mounir Ghogho