A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.
In this work, we explore how probabilistic programs can be used to represent policies in sequential decision problems. In this formulation, a probabilistic program is a black-box stochastic simulator for both the problem domain and the agent. We relate classic policy gradient techniques to recently introduced black-box…
Unified approach to dynamic programming improves reinforcement learning performance.
problem Improving approximate dynamic programming for broader reinforcement learning applications.
method Proposes Generalized Value Iteration (GVI) and its approximated version, Approximate GVI (AGVI), unifying value iteration, advantage learning, and dynamic policy programming.
result Demonstrates performance guarantees for AGVI, including those for existing algorithms.
We propose a hybrid algorithmic strategy for complex stochastic optimization problems, which combines the use of scenario trees from multistage stochastic programming with machine learning techniques for learning a policy in the form of a statistical model, in the context of constrained vector-valued decisions. Such a …
Paper proposes a method for optimizing local policies for trajectory-centric reinforcement learning.
problem Challenges in global policy optimization for non-linear systems and poor performance of open-loop trajectory optimization.
method Formulates trajectory optimization and local policy synthesis as a single optimization problem and solves it as a nonlinear programming instance.
result Demonstrates improved performance of the proposed technique under simplifying assumptions.
This paper optimizes sampling policies for Bayesian optimization to improve exploration and exploitation.
problem Improving the balance between exploration and exploitation in Bayesian optimization.
method Developed efficient methods to estimate and optimize non-myopic acquisition functions using rollout policies and stochastic gradient optimization.
result Efficient optimization of sampling policies leads to better performance in Bayesian optimization.
The paper tackles control policy learning for unknown systems using convex optimization.
problem Learning control policies for unknown linear dynamical systems to maximize a quadratic reward function.
method Sequential convex programming to optimize expected reward over posterior system parameter distribution.
result The method achieves reliable local convergence and robust stability, demonstrated with strong performance and robustness in simulations and real-world applications.
In this paper, we propose a novel policy iteration method, called dynamic policy programming (DPP), to estimate the optimal policy in the infinite-horizon Markov decision processes. We prove the finite-iteration and asymptotic l\infty-norm performance-loss bounds for DPP in the presence of approximation/estimation erro…
Study optimal policies under budget and coverage constraints.
problem Optimal policy learning with budget and coverage constraints.
method Combination of knapsack structure, affine threshold rule, linear programming relaxation, Greedy-Lagrangian (GLC), and rank-and-cut (RC) algorithms.
result GLC closely approximates the optimal solution and achieves near-optimal performance in finite samples; RC is approximately optimal under certain conditions.
The stochastic knapsack has been used as a model in wide ranging applications from dynamic resource allocation to admission control in telecommunication. In recent years, a variation of the model has become a basic tool in studying problems that arise in revenue management and dynamic/flexible pricing; and it is in thi…
Selecting the best policy to keep the balance between what a company holds in cash and what is placed in alternative investments is by no means straightforward. We here introduce PyCaMa, a Python module for multiobjective cash management based on linear programming that allows to derive optimal policies for cash manage…
Approximate dynamic programming is a popular method for solving large Markov decision processes. This paper describes a new class of approximate dynamic programming (ADP) methods- distributionally robust ADP-that address the curse of dimensionality by minimizing a pessimistic bound on the policy loss. This approach tur…