A theoretical analysis of Model-Based Interval Estimation

  • Authors:
  • Alexander L. Strehl;Michael L. Littman

  • Affiliations:
  • Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ;Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

  • Venue:
  • ICML '05 Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on Machine learning
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Several algorithms for learning near-optimal policies in Markov Decision Processes have been analyzed and proven efficient. Empirical results have suggested that Model-based Interval Estimation (MBIE) learns efficiently in practice, effectively balancing exploration and exploitation. This paper presents the first theoretical analysis of MBIE, proving its efficiency even under worst-case conditions. The paper also introduces a new performance metric, average loss, and relates it to its less "online" cousins from the literature.