Reinforcement Learning with Markov Risk Measures and Multipattern Risk Approximation

Andrzej Ruszczynski; Tiangang Zhang

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arXiv · 2605.00654

Reinforcement Learning with Markov Risk Measures and Multipattern Risk Approximation

Andrzej Ruszczynski·Tiangang Zhang

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Abstract

For a risk-averse finite-horizon Markov Decision Problem, we introduce a special class of Markov coherent risk measures, called mini-batch measures. We also define the class of multipattern risk-averse problems that generalizes the class of linear systems. We use both concepts in a feature-based $Q$-learning method with multipattern $Q$-factor approximation and we prove a high-probability regret bound of $\mathcal{O}\big(H^2 N^H \sqrt{ K}\big)$, where $H$ is the horizon, $N$ is the mini-batch size, and $K$ is the number of episodes. We also propose an economical version of the $Q$-learning method that streamlines the policy evaluation (backward) step. The theoretical results are illustrated on a stochastic assignment problem and a short-horizon multi-armed bandit problem.

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BibTeX RIS

Andrzej Ruszczynski, Tiangang Zhang. 2026-05-01. Reinforcement Learning with Markov Risk Measures and Multipattern Risk Approximation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.00654

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