TY - GEN
T1 - Beyond Value-Function Gaps
T2 - 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2021
AU - Dann, Chris
AU - Marinov, Teodor V.
AU - Mohri, Mehryar
AU - Zimmert, Julian
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Neural information processing systems foundation. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - We provide improved gap-dependent regret bounds for reinforcement learning in finite episodic Markov decision processes. Compared to prior work, our bounds depend on alternative definitions of gaps. These definitions are based on the insight that, in order to achieve a favorable regret, an algorithm does not need to learn how to behave optimally in states that are not reached by an optimal policy. We prove tighter upper regret bounds for optimistic algorithms and accompany them with new information-theoretic lower bounds for a large class of MDPs. Our results show that optimistic algorithms can not achieve the information-theoretic lower bounds even in deterministic MDPs unless there is a unique optimal policy.
AB - We provide improved gap-dependent regret bounds for reinforcement learning in finite episodic Markov decision processes. Compared to prior work, our bounds depend on alternative definitions of gaps. These definitions are based on the insight that, in order to achieve a favorable regret, an algorithm does not need to learn how to behave optimally in states that are not reached by an optimal policy. We prove tighter upper regret bounds for optimistic algorithms and accompany them with new information-theoretic lower bounds for a large class of MDPs. Our results show that optimistic algorithms can not achieve the information-theoretic lower bounds even in deterministic MDPs unless there is a unique optimal policy.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85131719602&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85131719602&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85131719602
T3 - Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems
SP - 1
EP - 12
BT - Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 34 - 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2021
A2 - Ranzato, Marc'Aurelio
A2 - Beygelzimer, Alina
A2 - Dauphin, Yann
A2 - Liang, Percy S.
A2 - Wortman Vaughan, Jenn
PB - Neural information processing systems foundation
Y2 - 6 December 2021 through 14 December 2021
ER -