Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Suzuki, Kyohei, Slavakis, Konstantinos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15652
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915502691975168
author Suzuki, Kyohei
Slavakis, Konstantinos
author_facet Suzuki, Kyohei
Slavakis, Konstantinos
contents This work proposes an efficient batch algorithm for feature selection in reinforcement learning (RL) with theoretical convergence guarantees. To mitigate the estimation bias inherent in conventional regularization schemes, the first contribution extends policy evaluation within the classical least-squares temporal-difference (LSTD) framework by formulating a Bellman-residual objective regularized with the sparsity-inducing, nonconvex projected minimax concave (PMC) penalty. Owing to the weak convexity of the PMC penalty, this formulation can be interpreted as a special instance of a general nonmonotone-inclusion problem. The second contribution establishes novel convergence conditions for the forward-reflected-backward splitting (FRBS) algorithm to solve this class of problems. Numerical experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach substantially outperforms state-of-the-art feature-selection methods, particularly in scenarios with many noisy features.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_15652
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nonconvex Regularization for Feature Selection in Reinforcement Learning
Suzuki, Kyohei
Slavakis, Konstantinos
Machine Learning
This work proposes an efficient batch algorithm for feature selection in reinforcement learning (RL) with theoretical convergence guarantees. To mitigate the estimation bias inherent in conventional regularization schemes, the first contribution extends policy evaluation within the classical least-squares temporal-difference (LSTD) framework by formulating a Bellman-residual objective regularized with the sparsity-inducing, nonconvex projected minimax concave (PMC) penalty. Owing to the weak convexity of the PMC penalty, this formulation can be interpreted as a special instance of a general nonmonotone-inclusion problem. The second contribution establishes novel convergence conditions for the forward-reflected-backward splitting (FRBS) algorithm to solve this class of problems. Numerical experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach substantially outperforms state-of-the-art feature-selection methods, particularly in scenarios with many noisy features.
title Nonconvex Regularization for Feature Selection in Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15652