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arXiv research

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.

168,742 papers · 148 categories

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48 results for value-function discriminator

This work provides guarantees for off-policy function estimation under realizability assumptions.

problem Estimating the value function of a policy under user-specified error-measuring distributions.
method The approach involves imposing a flexible regularization on the MIS objectives to account for an arbitrary user-specified distribution.
result Exact characterization of the optimal dual solution that determines the data-coverage assumption in the case of value-function learning.

Q-MMR evaluates policies using reweighted rewards and moment matching.

problem Off-policy evaluation in finite-horizon MDPs.
method Q-MMR learns scalar weights for data points via a moment matching objective against a value-function discriminator class.
result Data-dependent finite-sample guarantee with a dimension-free error bound.

We provide theoretical investigations into off-policy evaluation in reinforcement learning using function approximators for (marginalized) importance weights and value functions. Our contributions include: (1) A new estimator, MWL, that directly estimates importance ratios over the state-action distributions, removing …

2019-10-28abs ↗pdf ↗

We approximate derivatives of functions on manifolds by embedding them and applying vector-valued operators.

problem Derivatives of manifold-valued functions are harder to approximate than vector-valued functions.
method Embed the manifold into a higher space, approximate the derivative of the vector-valued function, and project back.
result We provide error bounds for the approximation of manifold-valued function derivatives.

The paper improves energy decay estimates for Dir-stationary Q-valued functions and applies them to Liouville-type theorems and continuity.

problem Improving energy decay estimates for Dir-stationary Q-valued functions.
method Establishing improved decay estimates and applying them to derive Liouville-type theorems and continuity.
result Dir-stationary Q-valued functions exhibit the Lebesgue property and reside in a generalized Campanato-Morrey space.

Kernel methods are among the most popular techniques in machine learning. From a frequentist/discriminative perspective they play a central role in regularization theory as they provide a natural choice for the hypotheses space and the regularization functional through the notion of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. F…

2011-06-30abs ↗pdf ↗

We study the use of randomized value functions to guide deep exploration in reinforcement learning. This offers an elegant means for synthesizing statistically and computationally efficient exploration with common practical approaches to value function learning. We present several reinforcement learning algorithms that…

2017-03-22abs ↗pdf ↗

Develops hierarchical reinforcement learning value function approximators.

problem Estimating long-term returns in reinforcement learning with multiple goals.
method Introduces hierarchical universal value function approximators (H-UVFAs) using the options framework.
result Demonstrates generalization and improved performance of H-UVFAs over UVFAs.

PBVFs generalize across policies using learned value functions.

problem RL algorithms forget information about old policies when updating value functions to track the learned policy.
method Introduce Parameter-Based Value Functions (PBVFs) that include policy parameters in their inputs, enabling them to generalize across different policies.
result PBVFs enable zero-shot learning of new policies that outperform any policy seen during training.

The paper uses complex-valued functions to simplify plane differential geometry and kinematics.

problem Simplifying complex problems in plane differential geometry and kinematics.
method Consistent use of complex-valued functions of a real variable.
result Derives results in a particularly simple, uniform, and transparent way.

Paper develops efficient RL algorithm for general value function approximation.

problem Lack of theory for RL with general value function approximation.
method Provable efficient RL algorithm using bounded eluder dimension.
result Achieves a regret bound of O~(poly(dH)T)\widetilde{O}(\mathrm{poly}(dH)\sqrt{T}).

New RL method learns value function for many policies using few key states.

problem Evaluate and improve policies in continuous control problems.
method Combines actor-critic architecture and policy embedding to learn a single value function for many policies.
result Value function minimizes prediction error by learning a small set of 'probing states' and their impact on policies' returns.

Paper presents an efficient exploration method for reinforcement learning.

problem Efficient exploration in reinforcement learning with uncertainty quantification.
method Parameterized Indexed Value Function (PIV) using index sampling.
result Proves the regret bound for learning PIV in a tabular setting and proposes PINs for computational learning.

Novel framework for Bayesian reinforcement learning infers value function distributions.

problem Bayesian reinforcement learning's challenges in inferring value function distributions.
method Inferential Induction framework for Bayesian reinforcement learning, developing Bayesian Backwards Induction algorithm.
result Proposed algorithm is competitive with state-of-the-art methods.

We establish geometric and topological properties of the space of value functions in finite state-action Markov decision processes. Our main contribution is the characterization of the nature of its shape: a general polytope (Aigner et al., 2010). To demonstrate this result, we exhibit several properties of the structu…

2019-01-31abs ↗pdf ↗

Despite recent successes in Reinforcement Learning, value-based methods often suffer from high variance hindering performance. In this paper, we illustrate this in a continuous control setting where state of the art methods perform poorly whenever sensor noise is introduced. To overcome this issue, we introduce Recurre…

2019-05-23abs ↗pdf ↗

Paper tackles robust control of SDEs with ambiguity, proving value function existence and applying to investment problems.

problem Robust control of SDEs with ambiguity parameters and non-Lipschitz coefficients.
method Existence and uniqueness of value function established through BSDEs with non-linear growth conditions.
result Existence and uniqueness of value function in proper space, verified through BSDEs.

We present a fully nonparametric method to estimate the value function, via simulation, in the context of expected infinite-horizon discounted rewards for Markov chains. Estimating such value functions plays an important role in approximate dynamic programming and applied probability in general. We incorporate "soft in…

2013-12-26abs ↗pdf ↗

PPG separates policy and value function training phases for better reinforcement learning efficiency.

problem Challenges in traditional reinforcement learning methods for policy and value function optimization.
method Integrates Phasic Policy Gradient framework that splits policy and value function training into distinct phases.
result Significantly improves sample efficiency on Procgen Benchmark compared to PPO.

A reinforcement learning framework combining value function and tree search planner for strategic and tactical decisions.

problem Strategic and tactical decision-making in discrete environments.
method Combines value function and tree search planner, using uncertainty modeling and risk measurement.
result Improves performance and learning speed on hard exploration environments.

The Bellman error is a poor proxy for value function accuracy, even with all state-action pairs.

problem The Bellman error is a poor proxy for the accuracy of the value function.
method Study of the Bellman equation as a surrogate objective for value prediction accuracy.
result The magnitude of the Bellman error is only weakly related to the distance to the true value function, even with all state-action pairs.

Randomized value functions offer a promising approach towards the challenge of efficient exploration in complex environments with high dimensional state and action spaces. Unlike traditional point estimate methods, randomized value functions maintain a posterior distribution over action-space values. This prevents the …

2018-06-06abs ↗pdf ↗

Estimating the value function for a fixed policy is a fundamental problem in reinforcement learning. Policy evaluation algorithms---to estimate value functions---continue to be developed, to improve convergence rates, improve stability and handle variability, particularly for off-policy learning. To understand the prop…

2018-08-28abs ↗pdf ↗

The study quantifies and compares aleatoric and epistemic discrimination in ML models.

problem Sources of discrimination in ML models and their impact on performance.
method Quantifying aleatoric and epistemic discrimination using statistical experiments and model accuracy.
result State-of-the-art fairness interventions are effective at removing epistemic discrimination but not aleatoric discrimination in datasets with missing values.

In a discounted reward Markov Decision Process (MDP), the objective is to find the optimal value function, i.e., the value function corresponding to an optimal policy. This problem reduces to solving a functional equation known as the Bellman equation and a fixed point iteration scheme known as the value iteration is u…

2019-03-09abs ↗pdf ↗

A novel approach uses an ensemble of Gaussian processes for robust and adaptive reinforcement learning.

problem Adaptive reinforcement learning in large or continuous state spaces.
method Online scalable (OS) approach with a weighted ensemble of Gaussian processes.
result The ensemble approach improves performance in adversarial settings.

A new method for estimating joint value functions in multi-scene reinforcement learning.

problem High variance in samples for policy gradient computations in multi-scene environments.
method Sparse attention mechanism over multiple value function hypotheses to approximate the true joint value function.
result Significant improvements in reward scores and enhanced navigation efficiency across OpenAI ProcGen environments.

Extends Campanato theory to multi-valued functions for geometric variational problems.

problem Regularity of multi-valued functions in geometric variational problems.
method Adapting Campanato's ideas to multi-valued functions, proving regularity theorems.
result Established regularity for multi-valued harmonic functions and stationary integral varifolds.

Discrimination-aware classification is receiving an increasing attention in data science fields. The pre-process methods for constructing a discrimination-free classifier first remove discrimination from the training data, and then learn the classifier from the cleaned data. However, they lack a theoretical guarantee f…

2017-02-28abs ↗pdf ↗

Discriminator guidance improves autoregressive diffusion models for generating molecular graphs.

problem Improving the accuracy of autoregressive diffusion models for generating molecular graphs.
method Deriving ways to use a discriminator with a pretrained generative model in the discrete case, including optimal and sub-optimal scenarios.
result Using a discriminator can correct pretrained models and improve exact sampling from the data distribution.

Kernel discriminant analysis uses nonlinear embeddings to improve classification.

problem Limited effectiveness of linear discriminant analysis in capturing nonlinear features.
method Study of nonlinear embeddings in kernel discriminant analysis using polynomial and Gaussian kernels, solving generalized eigenvalue problems.
result Polynomial and Gaussian discriminants capture class differences through population moments and randomized projections.