lemma 14
Supplementary Material for: An Exponential Lower Bound for Linearly-Realizable MDPs with Constant Suboptimality Gap
We first verify the statement for the terminal state f. Observe that at the terminal state f, regardless of the action taken, the next state is always f and the reward is always 0. Hence Q h(f,) = V h(f) = 0 for all h [H]. Thus Q h(f,) = hฯ(f,),v(a)i= 0. We now verify realizability for other states via induction on h = H,H 1,,1. Next, note that h, (2) follows from (1). In other words, (1) implies that a is always the optimal action.
Learning the score under shape constraints
Lewis, Rebecca M., Feng, Oliver Y., Reeve, Henry W. J., Xu, Min, Samworth, Richard J.
Score estimation has recently emerged as a key modern statistical challenge, due to its pivotal role in generative modelling via diffusion models. Moreover, it is an essential ingredient in a new approach to linear regression via convex $M$-estimation, where the corresponding error densities are projected onto the log-concave class. Motivated by these applications, we study the minimax risk of score estimation with respect to squared $L^2(P_0)$-loss, where $P_0$ denotes an underlying log-concave distribution on $\mathbb{R}$. Such distributions have decreasing score functions, but on its own, this shape constraint is insufficient to guarantee a finite minimax risk. We therefore define subclasses of log-concave densities that capture two fundamental aspects of the estimation problem. First, we establish the crucial impact of tail behaviour on score estimation by determining the minimax rate over a class of log-concave densities whose score function exhibits controlled growth relative to the quantile levels. Second, we explore the interplay between smoothness and log-concavity by considering the class of log-concave densities with a scale restriction and a $(ฮฒ,L)$-Hรถlder assumption on the log-density for some $ฮฒ\in [1,2]$. We show that the minimax risk over this latter class is of order $L^{2/(2ฮฒ+1)}n^{-ฮฒ/(2ฮฒ+1)}$ up to poly-logarithmic factors, where $n$ denotes the sample size. When $ฮฒ< 2$, this rate is faster than could be obtained under either the shape constraint or the smoothness assumption alone. Our upper bounds are attained by a locally adaptive, multiscale estimator constructed from a uniform confidence band for the score function. This study highlights intriguing differences between the score estimation and density estimation problems over this shape-constrained class.
Supplementary Materials A Hessian Vector Implementation
We then select those that yield the best convergence performance. However, our code supports GPU cluster training. VRBO becomes slower and less stable. As a result, single-sample based algorithms enable a larger parameter update per sample, and hence achieve a higher sample efficiency. Besides, we apply the standard grid search for the inner-and outer-loop stepsizes for all algorithms.
Optimal Online Bookmaking for Any Number of Outcomes
We study the Online Bookmaking problem, where a bookmaker dynamically updates betting odds on the possible outcomes of an event. In each betting round, the bookmaker can adjust the odds based on the cumulative betting behavior of gamblers, aiming to maximize profit while mitigating potential loss. We show that for any event and any number of betting rounds, in a worst-case setting over all possible gamblers and outcome realizations, the bookmaker's optimal loss is the largest root of a simple polynomial. Our solution shows that bookmakers can be as fair as desired while avoiding financial risk, and the explicit characterization reveals an intriguing relation between the bookmaker's regret and Hermite polynomials. We develop an efficient algorithm that computes the optimal bookmaking strategy: when facing an optimal gambler, the algorithm achieves the optimal loss, and in rounds where the gambler is suboptimal, it reduces the achieved loss to the optimal opportunistic loss, a notion that is related to subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. The key technical contribution to achieve these results is an explicit characterization of the Bellman-Pareto frontier, which unifies the dynamic programming updates for Bellman's value function with the multi-criteria optimization framework of the Pareto frontier in the context of vector repeated games.