用博弈视角设计高效探索算法,解决线性强化学习中的最优采样难题。
Pure Exploration via Frank-Wolfe Self-Play
- 将探索问题建模为双人零和博弈,通过Frank-Wolfe自对弈实现无调参更新
- 在非唯一最优、边界不光滑等病理情况下仍保证收敛到最优解
- 适用于需要高精度识别最优臂的强化学习任务,如科学实验设计
我们研究结构化随机多臂老虎机中的纯探索问题,目标是高效识别有限假设集中的正确假设。对于广泛的任务,渐近分析可归约为一个极大极小优化问题,其可解释为实验者与怀疑者之间的二人零和博弈:实验者分配测量以排除备选方案,怀疑者提出挑战性假设。我们通过允许怀疑者采用混合策略重构该博弈,得到一个凸-凹鞍点问题。这一视角催生了弗兰克-沃尔夫自对弈(FWSP):一种无需投影、正则化和调参的方法,双方的一热更新与多臂老虎机采样范式一致。然而,结构性约束引发严重路径病态:线性带域案例研究显示存在非唯一最优解、最优设计中最佳臂质量为零、双线性目标函数及边界处非光滑性。我们通过微分包含论证,证明线性带域中最佳臂识别的博弈值收敛。分析基于连续时间极限:一个具有指数衰减李雅普诺夫函数的微分包含,暗示对偶间隙趋零并收敛至最优值。尽管李雅普诺夫分析要求目标函数可微(边界处不保证),我们证明沿连续轨迹算法会避开病态非光滑点,实现全局统一收敛。随后我们将离散更新嵌入扰动流,证明离散博弈值也收敛。基于FWSP,我们进一步提出基于后验采样的学习算法。数值实验验证了对偶间隙趋于零。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
We study pure exploration in structured stochastic multi-armed bandits, aiming to efficiently identify the correct hypothesis from a finite set of alternatives. For a broad class of tasks, asymptotic analyses reduce to a maximin optimization that admits a two-player zero-sum game interpretation between an experimenter and a skeptic: the experimenter allocates measurements to rule out alternatives while the skeptic proposes alternatives. We reformulate the game by allowing the skeptic to adopt a mixed strategy, yielding a concave-convex saddle-point problem. This viewpoint leads to Frank-Wolfe Self-Play (FWSP): a projection-free, regularization-free, tuning-free method whose one-hot updates on both sides match the bandit sampling paradigm. However, structural constraints introduce sharp pathologies that complicate algorithm design and analysis: our linear-bandit case study exhibits nonunique optima, optimal designs with zero mass on the best arm, bilinear objectives, and nonsmoothness at the boundary. We address these challenges via a differential-inclusion argument, proving convergence of the game value for best-arm identification in linear bandits. Our analysis proceeds through a continuous-time limit: a differential inclusion with a Lyapunov function that decays exponentially, implying a vanishing duality gap and convergence to the optimal value. Although Lyapunov analysis requires differentiability of the objective, which is not guaranteed on the boundary, we show that along continuous trajectories the algorithm steers away from pathological nonsmooth points and achieves uniform global convergence to the optimal game value. We then embed the discrete-time updates into a perturbed flow and show that the discrete game value also converges. Building on FWSP, we further propose a learning algorithm based on posterior sampling. Numerical experiments demonstrate a vanishing duality gap.
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