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2 votes
1 answer
282 views

What is the derivative of equation 1 in the paper "Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning"?

I am looking at the paper Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning, but I'm not sure how they proved theorem 3.1. Here is a screenshot of theorem 3.1. In the proof of theorem 3.1 ...
MoneyBall's user avatar
  • 121
8 votes
0 answers
293 views

Is the Bellman equation that uses sampling weighted by the Q values (instead of max) a contraction?

It is proved that the Bellman update is a contraction (1). Here is the Bellman update that is used for Q-Learning: $$Q_{t+1}(s, a) = Q_{t}(s, a) + \alpha*(r(s, a, s') + \gamma \max_{a^*} (Q_{t}(s', ...
sirfroggy's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

Proof of Maximization Bias in Q-learning?

In the textbook "Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction" by Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto, the concept of Maximization Bias is introduced in section 6.7, and how Q-learning "over-estimates" action-...
Jarvis1997's user avatar
22 votes
3 answers
6k views

Why doesn't Q-learning converge when using function approximation?

The tabular Q-learning algorithm is guaranteed to find the optimal $Q$ function, $Q^*$, provided the following conditions (the Robbins-Monro conditions) regarding the learning rate are satisfied $\...
nbro's user avatar
  • 41.4k
3 votes
2 answers
593 views

Why is the max a non-expansive operator?

In certain reinforcement learning (RL) proofs, the operators involved are assumed to be non-expansive. For example, on page 6 of the paper Generalized Markov Decision Processes: Dynamic-programming ...
nbro's user avatar
  • 41.4k
11 votes
2 answers
2k views

How do we prove the n-step return error reduction property?

In section 7.1 (about the n-step bootstrapping) of the book Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction (2nd edition), by Andrew Barto and Richard S. Sutton, the authors write about what they call the "n-...
123learn's user avatar
  • 111
2 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why does Q-learning converge to the optimal policy, even if the agent acts sub-optimally?

In Q-learning, during training, it doesn't matter how the agent selects actions. The algorithm always converges to the optimal policy. Why does this happen? What's the intuition?
Shifat E Arman's user avatar