Reinforcement Learning:
Introduction, The Learning Task, Q
Learning, Non-deterministic
Rewards And
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Introduction to Reinforcement Learning
• Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a type of machine learning
focused on training agents to make decisions.
• It is inspired by behavioral psychology and involves learning
from interactions with an environment.
• The goal is to maximize cumulative rewards by taking
actions based on the current state.
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Key Components of Reinforcement Learning
• The primary components of RL include the agent,
environment, actions, states, and rewards.
• The agent interacts with the environment by taking actions
that lead to new states and receiving rewards.
• These components work together to form a feedback loop
where the agent learns from the consequences of its
actions.
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The Learning Task in Reinforcement Learning
• The learning task involves finding a policy that maps states
to actions to maximize long-term rewards.
• The policy can be deterministic or stochastic, influencing
how the agent behaves in different states.
• The agent must explore the environment while also
exploiting the knowledge it has gained to be effective.
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Exploration vs. Exploitation
• Exploration involves trying out new actions to discover their
effects and potential rewards.
• Exploitation uses the current knowledge to choose actions
that are known to yield high rewards.
• Balancing exploration and exploitation is crucial for
effective learning and performance in RL.
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Q-Learning Overview
• Q-learning is a model-free reinforcement learning algorithm
that learns a value function.
• It estimates the quality (Q-value) of action choices in each
state to inform decision-making.
• Q-learning updates its estimates based on the reward
received and the maximum expected future rewards.
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The Q-learning Algorithm
• The Q-learning algorithm updates the Q-value using the
Bellman equation.
• The update rule is defined as Q(s,a) ← Q(s,a) + α[r + γ max
Q(s', a') - Q(s,a)], where α is the learning rate.
• This iterative process continues until the Q-values converge
to optimal values across all states and actions.
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Non-Deterministic Rewards
• Non-deterministic rewards occur when the same action in a
given state may yield different outcomes.
• This uncertainty complicates the learning process, as the
agent must adapt to varying rewards from its actions.
• Effective strategies must be developed to handle this
variability and still optimize long-term performance.
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Strategies for Handling Non-Deterministic
Rewards
• One approach is to use a probabilistic model of the rewards
to guide the learning process.
• Another strategy involves maintaining multiple Q-values for
each action to account for variability in outcomes.
• These techniques help agents make more robust decisions
despite the uncertainty present in the environment.
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Applications of Reinforcement Learning
• RL has been successfully applied in various fields, including
robotics, game playing, and autonomous vehicles.
• It is also used in finance for algorithmic trading and in
healthcare for personalized treatment plans.
• The adaptability of RL makes it suitable for complex
decision-making tasks across diverse domains.
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Future Directions in Reinforcement Learning
• Future research in RL focuses on improving sample
efficiency and reducing the need for extensive training
data.
• Integrating RL with deep learning techniques is paving the
way for more powerful and generalizable models.
• Understanding the ethical implications and safety of RL
applications is also becoming increasingly important.
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References
• Sutton, R. S., & Barto, A. G. (2018). Reinforcement Learning:
An Introduction (2nd ed.). MIT Press.
• Mnih, V., et al. (2015). Human-level control through deep
reinforcement learning. Nature, 518(7540), 529-533.
• Silver, D., et al. (2016). Mastering the game of Go with deep
neural networks and tree search. Nature, 529(7587), 484-
489.
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• This presentation structure provides a comprehensive
