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arXiv research

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168,695 papers · 148 categories

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220440660880 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for Optimal actions

New findings show optimization is crucial for OPL in large action spaces.

problem Challenges in optimizing policies for large action spaces in offline contextual bandits.
method Weighed log-likelihood objectives and estimator-aware policy parametrization.
result Simple weighted log-likelihood objectives enjoy better optimization properties and recover competitive policies.

Hybridizes CEM and gradient descent for efficient model-predictive control.

problem Efficiently planning optimal action sequences in high-dimensional spaces.
method Interleaves Cross-Entropy Method (CEM) and gradient descent steps.
result Faster convergence and avoidance of local optima compared to CEM.

Study lenient regret and good-action identification in Gaussian process bandits.

problem Optimizing function values above a certain threshold in Gaussian process bandits.
method Study lenient regret notions and introduce algorithms for finding good actions.
result Upper and lower bounds on lenient regret for GP-UCB and elimination algorithms.

MAGE optimizes policies using action gradients from model-based learning.

problem Lack of direct gradient information from critics in actor-critic methods.
method Model-based actor-critic algorithm that learns action-value gradient.
result MAGE outperforms model-free and model-based baselines on continuous control tasks.

New algorithm optimizes online decision-making with dynamically generated actions.

problem Balancing action generation costs with optimal decision-making in online learning.
method Doubly-optimistic algorithm using LCB for action selection and UCB for action generation.
result Achieves optimal regret bound of O(Tdd+2ddd+2+dTlogT)O(T^{\frac{d}{d+2}}d^{\frac{d}{d+2}} + d\sqrt{T\log T}).

Proposes a new algorithm for accurate tree-based models with guaranteed recourse actions.

problem Ensuring recourse actions for models optimized for predictive performance.
method Formulates and solves an optimization task to ensure reasonable actions for as many instances as possible, using adversarial training techniques.
result Successfully provided reasonable actions to more instances than baselines without significantly degrading accuracy and computational efficiency.

A new RL approach learns near-equivalent actions for healthcare decisions.

problem Finding optimal actions in healthcare settings where actions may be near-equivalent.
method Temporal difference learning with a near-greedy heuristic for action selection.
result The proposed algorithm discovers meaningful near-equivalent actions and converges well.

Value-based reinforcement learning (RL) methods like Q-learning have shown success in a variety of domains. One challenge in applying Q-learning to continuous-action RL problems, however, is the continuous action maximization (max-Q) required for optimal Bellman backup. In this work, we develop CAQL, a (class of) algor…

2019-09-26abs ↗pdf ↗

New findings on when to use action space exploration in reinforcement learning.

problem Understanding when to use action space exploration over traditional methods.
method Theoretical analysis and empirical testing of simple exploration methods.
result Exploration in action space is preferred when parametric complexity exceeds action space dimensionality and horizon length.

Algorithm minimizes loss and constraint violations in online convex optimization with smooth penalties.

problem Minimizing loss and constraint violations in online convex optimization with smooth penalties.
method Projected gradient descent over a set around the current action.
result Both dynamic regret and constraint violation are bounded by the path-length.

Solves action selection for large spaces in RL, achieving near-optimal performance.

problem Selecting a small, representative subset of actions from a large, shared action space.
method Extends meta-bandit approach to MDPs, using a relaxed sub-Gaussian process model.
result Achieves performance comparable to full action space, with theoretical guarantees.

New RL method handles large state-action spaces with complex models.

problem Complex models and large state-action spaces in reinforcement learning.
method π-KRVI, an optimistic modification of least-squares value iteration using kernel ridge regression.
result First order-optimal regret guarantees under general settings, improving over state of the art.

DFL framework improves action and outcome fairness in policy learning.

problem Fairness in policy learning, especially action and outcome fairness.
method Integrates action and outcome fairness into a multi-objective optimization problem using a lexicographic weighted Tchebyshev method.
result DFL framework improves both action and outcome fairness with minimal value reduction.

A new approach to reinforcement learning improves policy performance by adjusting control frequency.

problem Improving reinforcement learning performance by optimizing control frequency.
method Introducing action persistence and a novel algorithm, PFQI, to learn optimal value function at a given persistence.
result PFQI effectively learns optimal value function with action persistence, improving reinforcement learning performance.

We introduce a method for learning the dynamics of complex nonlinear systems based on deep generative models over temporal segments of states and actions. Unlike dynamics models that operate over individual discrete timesteps, we learn the distribution over future state trajectories conditioned on past state, past acti…

2017-03-12abs ↗pdf ↗

Neural Index Policy for multi-action bandits with heterogeneous budgets.

problem Real-world settings often involve multiple interventions with heterogeneous costs and constraints, breaking classical assumptions.
method Introduces a Neural Index Policy (NIP) that learns to assign budget-aware indices to arm-action pairs using a neural network and differentiable knapsack layer.
result Empirically achieves near-optimal performance while strictly enforcing heterogeneous budgets and scaling to hundreds of arms.

We enhance conformal prediction for risk-averse decisions with action-conditional guarantees.

problem Uncertainty quantification and safety guarantees for machine learning decisions.
method Action-conditional conformal prediction, pinball-loss minimization.
result Action-conditional prediction sets optimize risk-averse decision-making.

New method identifies flawed internal models of the world in animals.

problem How animals make decisions with partial sensory information.
method Generalizes Inverse Rational Control to continuous nonlinear dynamics and noise.
result Identifies the best internal model explaining an agent's actions.

This paper investigates the adversarial Bandits with Knapsack (BwK) online learning problem, where a player repeatedly chooses to perform an action, pays the corresponding cost, and receives a reward associated with the action. The player is constrained by the maximum budget BB that can be spent to perform actions, an…

2018-10-23abs ↗pdf ↗

We study an original problem of pure exploration in a strategic bandit model motivated by Monte Carlo Tree Search. It consists in identifying the best action in a game, when the player may sample random outcomes of sequentially chosen pairs of actions. We propose two strategies for the fixed-confidence setting: Maximin…

2016-02-15abs ↗pdf ↗

Hybrid Policy Optimization tackles reinforcement learning in hybrid spaces, improving performance over PPO.

problem Credit assignment issues and biased gradients in hybrid discrete-continuous action spaces.
method Mixed gradient estimator combining pathwise and score-function gradients, reformulating problems in hybrid form.
result HPO substantially outperforms PPO on inventory control and switched systems, with performance gaps increasing with continuous action dimension.

Practical algorithm for contextual bandits with large action spaces.

problem Efficient algorithms for decision making in large, continuous action spaces.
method Uses computational oracles for supervised learning and optimization over the action space.
result Achieves sample complexity, runtime, and memory independent of the size of the action space.

Proposes an efficient method for ordered counterfactual explanations.

problem Insufficient explanation of perturbation vectors for executing actions.
method Mixed-Integer Linear Optimization (MILP) approach for evaluating and extracting optimal pairs of actions and orders.
result Demonstrated effectiveness of the proposed method on real datasets.

A framework for reinforcement learning tackles CVRP with competitive results.

problem Optimizing routes for vehicles with limited capacity.
method Formulates action selection as a mixed-integer optimization problem, uses policy iteration to improve policies.
result Achieves an average gap of 1.7% with state-of-the-art OR methods on CVRP instances.

Off-policy stochastic actor-critic methods rely on approximating the stochastic policy gradient in order to derive an optimal policy. One may also derive the optimal policy by approximating the action-value gradient. The use of action-value gradients is desirable as policy improvement occurs along the direction of stee…

2017-03-06abs ↗pdf ↗

Decouples critic chunk length from policy to improve policy reactivity and performance.

problem Bootstrapping bias and difficulty in extracting optimal policies from chunked critics.
method Optimizes policy against a distilled critic for partial action chunks, allowing shorter chunks for policy.
result Reliably outperforms prior methods on long-horizon offline goal-conditioned tasks.

New method AM learns optimal vector fields for entire distribution sequences, matching OT.

problem Optimal Transport (OT) problem in generative modeling.
method Action Matching (AM) method learns optimal vector fields for a sequence of distributions.
result AM method achieves optimal transport by learning vector fields for entire distribution sequences.

We study the sparse entropy-regularized reinforcement learning (ERL) problem in which the entropy term is a special form of the Tsallis entropy. The optimal policy of this formulation is sparse, i.e.,~at each state, it has non-zero probability for only a small number of actions. This addresses the main drawback of the …

2018-02-10abs ↗pdf ↗