Talk:Reinforcement learning

message: There is a short article on Q learning and could be merged with reinforcement learning Kpmiyapuram 14:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd offer that Q Learning be expanded instead. In Q Learning's "See Also" there's Watkins' thesis, which I faintly remember is where Q Learning was introduced; but there's no mention of Watkins or any other researcher in the article. Additionally, Sutton's RL book is listed, which would be a great source to mine for further detail on history and application. --59.167.203.115 (talk) 01:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I'd back Q-learning being expanded instead, with a summary in RL. As Q-learning is an active area of research it will grow over time, so it would be short-sighted to merge them - especially as they are already separate. At the start of my research it would have been SO helpful to know what was applicable to RL generally, and what was Q-Learning. --217.37.215.53 (talk) 10:05, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  merge with Q learning 

message: * active (policy improvement) vs passive (policy evaluation)
* Adaptive Dynamic Programming (ADP)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.177.27.1 (talk) 17:23, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  algorithms/concepts not mentioned 

message: Where's all the stuff about learning in games?  It would be great if someone could incorporate this. Jeremy Tobacman 23:40, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's certainly relevant, but you may have to add it yourself if you're familiar with the subject. I've come across that aspect a few times but never really looked into it, though I have seen quite a few papers on interacting multiagent systems from the game and economic perspectives (always, I think, the agents were working against each other to try to maximize profit or win the game, etc.). So add what you know, and others may be able to clean up any incorrect claims. digfarenough (talk) 16:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economics? 

message: This article starts with a reference to 'Reinforcement learning' in psychology. Isn't there an article about that? --Rinconsoleao 13:43, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Found it... --Rinconsoleao 13:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Psychology 

message: I feel the literature referenced by Csaba Szepesvàri was a useful addition and perhaps should not have been removed. Even though he referenced a book written by himself, he is a well known and respected researcher in reinforcement learning and this book is a useful overview of the field. I do not know of many good recent alternatives, so I would favor reverting MrOllie's revision. However, rather than immediately doing so, I thought it might be better to start a discussion.
* What literature would be indispenable? (In my opinion, in any case the books by Sutton & Barto and by Berstekas & Tsitsiklis, although most of the other referenced work at present also looks fine.)
* What literature might be removed? (For instance, I haven't read the latest addition by Tokic, is this a relevant enough paper to include?)
* Is there any important work missing? (As mentioned, I would favor the return of a reference to Csaba Szepesvàri's book.)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.16.201.233 (talk) 12:04, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literature 

message: * Is there any difference between the "inverse" and "apprenticeship" learning?  From the descriptions, they appear to be basically the same. 
*Refs - needs inline refs
*Check content for missing statements
*Assess on B scale
*Broken link:  A Short Introduction To Some Reinforcement Learning Algorithms   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.76.175.3 (talk) 01:11, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Attention needed

message: 'The theory of small mdps is [..] mature; [..] the theory of large mdps needs more work.'
What does that even mean ? Theory is theory; if you understand an mdp with 10 states, than
you understand one with ten million states, although standard algorithms may run too slow,
I can't see the conceptual difference between ten and ten million as far as theory is concerned.
Does the author mean either:
a) small equals finite and large equals countably or uncountably infinite, or
b) approximation methods (in itself only useful when direct methods fail) are not as well understood. 
 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.193.140.25 (talk) 09:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  small and large mdps 

message: Can someone make a sub-category for machine learning maybe? --77.4.90.71 (talk) 16:35, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  category needed 

message: The table comparing algorithms is just plain wrong: 
* Monte Carlo is not an algorithm at all, but a family of algorithms for all kinds of problems (including RL). For RL many different Monte Carlo algorithms exist.  The description is even more misleading: " 	Every visit to Monte Carlo" Every-visit is only one value of one option in Monte-Carlo RL methods (the other option being First-visit). Not picking Every-visit doesn't make the method less Monte-Carlo, it just changes the update operator for the value function.  
* The Policy column is not actually about the type of policy, but about how the policy is optimised (on- or off-policy). 
* The Operator column does not contain operators: Q-value and Advantage are types of value functions. The operators used on these value functions are what defines the method. The book by Sutton and Barto defines these operators using backup diagrams. Note that Monte-Carlo methods typically also maintain a value function (such as Q-values), they are just updated differently from methods such as Q-learning, which use Bellman backups rather than Monte Carlo estimators of the returns. 
* A number of relevant properties is omitted
* The table seems heavily biased towards recent neural-network based methods (only the simpler classical methods are represented, giving for example the wrong impression that no classical methods existed that could handle continuous state or action spaces). 
I'm not quite sure how to reorganise this table without it becoming monstrous in size. In its present state it is however highly confusing and misleading. I'd say it would be better to remove it than to keep it as it currently is.
LordDamorcro (talk) 18:39, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The comparison of algorithms table 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
* 
Participate in the deletion discussion at the . —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:25, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: Wikipedia is not for the purpose only of informing persons already expert in the subject matter, not is it a forum for authors to demonstrate their knowledge or show off their technical grasp to others in their field. Articles in Wikipedia are supposed to EXPLAIN things. This means breaking down jargon. It means setting out topics in a manner that makes them approachable for people not already well read in the field.
Too many Wikipedia articles, including this one, are written by peopple incapable of understanding this extremely obvious perspective. The purpose is not to compose some form of canonical description of the field in the most compact, concise or dense langiage possible. It is the opposite. Many authors here are academics, but it seems clear many would struggle successfully to teach a class anything at all. 49.180.205.46 (talk) 10:20, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  General level of accessibility. 

message: related literature about effect of academic pressure 209.35.172.23 (talk) 07:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  research project  

message: It would be good to have a section on the applications of RL on this page. I haven't done any major writing on wiki and not sure If I can just add one. 
eg. Robotics, self driving cars, gaming (AlphaGo) etc. Amitkannan (talk) 07:16, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Please don't. Applications sections are spam magnets and generally fill up with advertising and self promotion in short order. MrOllie (talk) 12:24, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  A section on Applications