在状态不可见的马尔可夫博弈中,设计出接近对数级后悔的算法。
Learning in Markovian bandits with non-observable states and constrained decision epochs
- 提出自退化马尔可夫博弈模型,纯策略渐近最优。
- 无先验知识时后悔下界超对数,但新算法接近对数增长。
- 有状态偏差上界时,可实现对数后悔,适合理论研究者。
本文研究状态不可观测且决策时刻可能受限的马尔可夫博弈中的后悔最小化问题。聚焦于纯后悔基准,即与始终选择最优动作的纯策略比较。引入自退化马尔可夫博弈的推广,其纯策略总是渐近最优。我们证明:在缺乏对底层博弈先验知识的情况下,频繁切换动作的算法的后悔至少为 ω(log(T)),其中 T 为学习时长。尽管无法达到对数后悔,但仍设计出受启发于 UCB 的乐观算法 UCB-NOM,其后悔几乎为对数级。进一步地,若已知各臂偏移函数的上界,通过适当实例化 UCB-NOM 可实现 O(log(T)) 回悔。此外,该先验知识还能使 UCB-NOM 在最坏情况下达到 O(√(T log(T))) 回悔。所有结果均不依赖底层马尔可夫链的状态数。研究表明,在自退化马尔可夫博弈中,状态不可观测是相对温和的问题。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
This paper studies the problem of regret minimization in Markovian bandits with \emph{non-observable states} and possibly \emph{constrained} decision epochs. The focus is restricted to a ``pure'' regret benchmark, that compares the performance of the learning algorithm to the best \emph{pure policy} which -- akin to optimal policies of stochastic bandits -- picks the optimal arm from start to finish without ever switching. We introduce a generalization of rested Markovian bandits, \emph{self-degrading Markovian bandits}, for which pure policies are always asymptotically optimal.We show that without prior knowledge on the underlying bandit, the regret of algorithms that switch arms rarely necessarily scales super-logarithmically for every bandit, i.e., as $ω(\log(T))$, where $T$ is the learning horizon. Despite the unreachability of the logarithmic regime, we design UCB-NOM, an optimistic algorithm inspired by UCB, of which the regret is nearly logarithmic. Lastly, we show that given prior knowledge on the Markovian bandit in the form of a bound on the bias functions of its arm, a proper instantiation of UCB-NOM achieves $O(\log(T))$ regret. We further show that this prior knowledge allows for a $O(\sqrt{T \log(T)})$ worst-case regret bound for UCB-NOM. Notably, our regret bounds do not depend on the number of states of the underlying Markov chains. Our findings suggest that the non-observability of states is a mild inconvenience in self-degrading Markovian bandits.
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