This is comes from cs2852023Fall, hw3. I'm learning RL by myself and I cann't find answers related to this question. The resource could be found in https://rail.eecs.berkeley.edu/deeprlcourse/. ## Backgorund Consider the N-step variant of Q-learning described. \begin{align} y_{i,j} \gets (\sum_{t'=t}^{t+N-1 }\gamma^{t'-t}r_{j,t'} + \gamma^N \max_{a_{j, t+N}}Q_{\phi_{k}}(s_{j,t+N}, a_{j,t+N}) (1)\\ \phi_{k+1} \gets \arg\min_{\phi\in\Phi}\sum_{j,t}(y_{j,t} - Q_{\phi}(s_{j,t}, a_{j,t}))^2 (2) \end{align} In these equations, $j$ indicates an index in the replay buffer of trajectories $𝓓_{k}$. We first roll out a batch of B trajectories to update $𝓓_{k}$ and compute the target values in (1). We then fit $Q_{\phi_{k+1}}$ to these target values with (2). After estimating $Q_{\phi_{k+1}}$, we can then update the policy through an argmax: $$ \pi_{k+1}(a_t | s_t) \gets \begin{cases} & 1\text{ if } a_{t} = \arg\max_{a_{t}}Q_{\phi_{k+1}}(s_{t}, a_{t})\\ & 0\text { otherwise } \end{cases}(3) $$ We repeat the steps in eqs.(1) to (3) K times to improve the policy. In this question, you will analyze some properties of the algoriyhm, which is summarized in Algorithm 1. # Question At each iteraction of the algorithm above after update from eq.(2), $Q_{\phi_{k}}$ can be viewed as an estimate of the true optimal $Q^\star$. Consider the following statements: **I.** $Q_{\phi_{k+1}}$ is an unbiased estimate of the $Q$ function of the last policy, $Q^{\pi_{k}}.$ **II.** As $k\to\infty$ for some fixed $B$ (replay_buffer), $Q^{\pi_{k}}$ is an unbiased estimate of $Q^{\star}$, i.e., $\lim_{k\to\infty}\mathbb{E}[Q_{\phi_{k}}(s,q) - Q^{\star}(s,a)] = 0$ **III.** In the limit of infinite iterations and data we recover the optmimal $Q^{\star}$, i.e., $\lim_{k,B\to\infty}\mathbb{E}[||Q_{\phi_{k}} - Q^{\star}||] = 0$ We make the additional assumptions: - The state and action spaces are finite. - Every batch contains at least one experience for each action taken in each state. - In the tabular setting, $Q_{\phi_{k}}$ can express any function, i.e., ${Q_{\phi_{k}}:\phi\in\Phi}=\mathbb{R}^{S \times A}$ When updating the buffer $𝓓_{k}$ with $B$, we say: - When learning on-policy, $𝓓_{k}$ is set to contain only the set of $B$ new rollouts of $\pi$ (so $|𝓓_{k} = B|$). Thus, we only train on rollouts from the current policy - When learning off-policy, we use a fixed dataset $𝓓_{k} = 𝓓$ of $B$ trajectories from another policy $\pi'$. Indicate which of the statements **I-III** always hold in the following cases. \begin{align} 1. &\text {N = 1 and... }&I\qquad &II\qquad &III\\ &a. on-policy in tablular setting. &\Box\qquad &\Box\qquad &\Box \\ &b. off-policy in tabular setting.&\Box\qquad &\Box\qquad &\Box \\ 2. &\text { N > 1 and...}\\ &a. on-policy in tablular setting.&\Box\qquad &\Box\qquad &\Box \\ &b. off-policy in tabular setting.&\Box\qquad &\Box\qquad &\Box \\ 3. &\text {In the limite as $N\to\infty$ and...}\\ &a. on-policy in tablular setting.&\Box\qquad &\Box\qquad &\Box \\ &b. off-policy in tabular setting.&\Box\qquad &\Box\qquad &\Box \\ \end{align} # My Understanding 1. When N = 1 - I: $ Q_{\phi_{k+1}}(s, a)=r(s,a) + \gamma \max_{a}Q_{\phi_{k}}(s_{t+1}, a_{t+1}) $, which is the Q function of the last policy, so this is the unbiased estimate of last policy? - II: Because of the contraction of Bellman operator, and the expression of Q is suffcient for Q value function, this is also right? - III: Statement is also right because of the contraction of Bellman Operator.