Black-box optimizers that explore in parameter space have often been shown to outperform more sophisticated action space exploration methods developed specifically for the reinforcement learning problem. We examine these black-box methods closely to identify situations in which they are worse than action space explorat…
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New algorithm learns optimal exploration parameters for contextual bandits.
This paper proposes an exploration method for deep reinforcement learning based on parameter space noise. Recent studies have experimentally shown that parameter space noise results in better exploration than the commonly used action space noise. Previous methods devised a way to update the diagonal covariance matrix o…
New findings on when to use action space exploration in reinforcement learning.
A framework for auto-tuning hyper-parameters in contextual bandit algorithms.
Optimizes exploration for nonlinear systems to learn controllers efficiently.
In complex simulation environments, certain parameter space regions may result in non-convergent or unphysical outcomes. All parameters can therefore be labeled with a binary class describing whether or not they lead to valid results. In general, it can be very difficult to determine feasible parameter regions, especia…
We propose a framework based on distributional reinforcement learning and recent attempts to combine Bayesian parameter updates with deep reinforcement learning. We show that our proposed framework conceptually unifies multiple previous methods in exploration. We also derive a practical algorithm that achieves efficien…
CAE repurposes critics for efficient exploration in RL.
The estimation of unknown values of parameters (or hidden variables, control variables) that characterise a physical system often relies on the comparison of measured data with synthetic data produced by some numerical simulator of the system as the parameter values are varied. This process often encounters two major d…
A simple uncertainty measure improves deep bandit performance.
Deep reinforcement learning (RL) methods generally engage in exploratory behavior through noise injection in the action space. An alternative is to add noise directly to the agent's parameters, which can lead to more consistent exploration and a richer set of behaviors. Methods such as evolutionary strategies use param…
A new exploration strategy for contextual bandits reduces regret and is computationally efficient.
We introduce two approaches for combining neural evolution strategy (NES) and proximal policy optimization (PPO): parameter transfer and parameter space noise. Parameter transfer is a PPO agent with parameters transferred from a NES agent. Parameter space noise is to directly add noise to the PPO agent`s parameters. We…
Bandit learning algorithms typically involve the balance of exploration and exploitation. However, in many practical applications, worst-case scenarios needing systematic exploration are seldom encountered. In this work, we consider a smoothed setting for structured linear contextual bandits where the adversarial conte…
We present a general method for fitting finite mixture models (FMM). Learning in a mixture model consists of finding the most likely cluster assignment for each data-point, as well as finding the parameters of the clusters themselves. In many mixture models, this is difficult with current learning methods, where the mo…
The ability to discover approximately optimal policies in domains with sparse rewards is crucial to applying reinforcement learning (RL) in many real-world scenarios. Approaches such as neural density models and continuous exploration (e.g., Go-Explore) have been proposed to maintain the high exploration rate necessary…
In this paper, we propose an information-theoretic exploration strategy for stochastic, discrete multi-armed bandits that achieves optimal regret. Our strategy is based on the value of information criterion. This criterion measures the trade-off between policy information and obtainable rewards. High amounts of policy …
In this paper we explore the parameter efficiency of BERT arXiv:1810.04805 on version 2.0 of the Stanford Question Answering dataset (SQuAD2.0). We evaluate the parameter efficiency of BERT while freezing a varying number of final transformer layers as well as including the adapter layers proposed in arXiv:1902.00751. …
Proposes EVE for efficient exploration in reinforcement learning.
Large learning rates cause parameter instability, leading to better generalization.
Proposes an amortized variational framework for Deep Q Networks.
Sampling one or more effective solutions from large search spaces is a recurring idea in machine learning, and sequential optimization has become a popular solution. Typical examples include data summarization, sample mining for predictive modeling and hyper-parameter optimization. Existing solutions attempt to adaptiv…
This paper investigates the effectiveness of adversarial training in enhancing the robustness of Deep Q-Network (DQN) policies to state-space perturbations. We first present a formal analysis of adversarial training in DQN agents and its performance with respect to the proportion of adversarial perturbations to nominal…
Algorithms that tackle deep exploration -- an important challenge in reinforcement learning -- have relied on epistemic uncertainty representation through ensembles or other hypermodels, exploration bonuses, or visitation count distributions. An open question is whether deep exploration can be achieved by an incrementa…
GPR enhances materials discovery by automating parameter space exploration.
Addressing the issue of SVMs parameters optimization, this study proposes an efficient memetic algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) and Pattern Search (PS). In the proposed memetic algorithm, PSO is responsible for exploration of the search space and the detection of the potential regions with…
We present a 1-parameter family of finite action solutions to the Hitchin's equations and explore some of its basic properties. For a fixed value of the parameter, the solution is smooth. We conclude by showing a multi-particle generalization of our basic solutions.
The paper analyzes the intrinsic exploration terms in policy-gradient algorithms.
Improved Bayesian optimisation method using randomised Gaussian process UCB.
BO algorithms improve binary and preferential optimization by distinguishing between types of uncertainty.
Active sampling improves design space exploration for analog circuits.
This paper tackles combinatorial optimization under uncertainty with limited feedback.
Modern deep neural networks are typically highly overparameterized. Pruning techniques are able to remove a significant fraction of network parameters with little loss in accuracy. Recently, techniques based on dynamic reallocation of non-zero parameters have emerged, allowing direct training of sparse networks without…
New -Coverage objective simplifies exploration in reinforcement learning.
New approach uses autoregressive models to explore and quantify uncertainty in decision-making.
EVILL uses randomised perturbations to improve exploration in bandit problems.
We introduce NoisyNet, a deep reinforcement learning agent with parametric noise added to its weights, and show that the induced stochasticity of the agent's policy can be used to aid efficient exploration. The parameters of the noise are learned with gradient descent along with the remaining network weights. NoisyNet …
We propose a framework that directly tackles the probability distribution of the value function parameters in Deep Q Network (DQN), with powerful variational inference subroutines to approximate the posterior of the parameters. We will establish the equivalence between our proposed surrogate objective and variational i…
The popularity of Bayesian optimization methods for efficient exploration of parameter spaces has lead to a series of papers applying Gaussian processes as surrogates in the optimization of functions. However, most proposed approaches only allow the exploration of the parameter space to occur sequentially. Often, it is…
Paper develops a dynamic Bayesian approach for active learning that optimizes exploration-exploitation balance.
Proposes meTS for efficient exploration in correlated bandits.
Study introduces a new method for multiple parameter regularization in polynomial functional regression.
The paper explores MAB strategies for very short horizons, introducing new methods and showing improved performance.
The paper characterizes biconservative surfaces in hyperbolic 4-space.
Study shows efficient neural network approach for stochastic bandits.
Proposes a method to enhance exploration in RL using temporal difference uncertainties.
CORe uses randomization to explore bandit problems without external noise.