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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2022.32

Mechanizing Soundness of Off-Policy Evaluation

Authors: Jared Yeager, J. Eliot B. Moss, Michael Norrish, and Philip S. Thomas

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 237, 13th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2022)

Abstract

There are reinforcement learning scenarios - e.g., in medicine - where we are compelled to be as confident as possible that a policy change will result in an improvement before implementing it. In such scenarios, we can employ off-policy evaluation (OPE). The basic idea of OPE is to record histories of behaviors under the current policy, and then develop an estimate of the quality of a proposed new policy, seeing what the behavior would have been under the new policy. As we are evaluating the policy without actually using it, we have the "off-policy" of OPE. Applying a concentration inequality to the estimate, we derive a confidence interval for the expected quality of the new policy. If the confidence interval lies above that of the current policy, we can change policies with high confidence that we will do no harm. We focus here on the mathematics of this method, by mechanizing the soundness of off-policy evaluation. A natural side effect of the mechanization is both to clarify all the result’s mathematical assumptions and preconditions, and to further develop HOL4’s library of verified statistical mathematics, including concentration inequalities. Of more significance, the OPE method relies on importance sampling, whose soundness we prove using a measure-theoretic approach. In fact, we generalize the standard result, showing it for contexts comprising both discrete and continuous probability distributions.

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Jared Yeager, J. Eliot B. Moss, Michael Norrish, and Philip S. Thomas. Mechanizing Soundness of Off-Policy Evaluation. In 13th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 237, pp. 32:1-32:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{yeager_et_al:LIPIcs.ITP.2022.32,
  author =	{Yeager, Jared and Moss, J. Eliot B. and Norrish, Michael and Thomas, Philip S.},
  title =	{{Mechanizing Soundness of Off-Policy Evaluation}},
  booktitle =	{13th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2022)},
  pages =	{32:1--32:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-252-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{237},
  editor =	{Andronick, June and de Moura, Leonardo},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2022.32},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-167413},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITP.2022.32},
  annote =	{Keywords: Formal Methods, HOL4, Reinforcement Learning, Off-Policy Evaluation, Concentration Inequality, Hoeffding}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/DagRep.5.1.1

Concurrent Computing in the Many-core Era (Dagstuhl Seminar 15021)

Authors: Michael Philippsen, Pascal Felber, Michael L. Scott, and J. Eliot B. Moss

Published in: Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 5, Issue 1 (2015)

Abstract

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 15021 "Concurrent computing in the many-core era". This seminar is a successor to Dagstuhl Seminars 08241 "Transactional memory: From implementation to application" and 12161 "Abstractions for scalable multicore computing", respectively held in June 2008 and in April 2012. The current seminar built on the previous seminars by notably (1) broadening the scope to concurrency beyond transactional memory and shared-memory multicores abstractions, (2) focusing on the new challenges and potential uses of emerging hardware support for synchronization extensions, and (3) considering the increasing complexity resulting from the explosion in heterogeneity.

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Michael Philippsen, Pascal Felber, Michael L. Scott, and J. Eliot B. Moss. Concurrent Computing in the Many-core Era (Dagstuhl Seminar 15021). In Dagstuhl Reports, Volume 5, Issue 1, pp. 1-56, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)

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@Article{philippsen_et_al:DagRep.5.1.1,
  author =	{Philippsen, Michael and Felber, Pascal and Scott, Michael L. and Moss, J. Eliot B.},
  title =	{{Concurrent Computing in the Many-core Era (Dagstuhl Seminar 15021)}},
  pages =	{1--56},
  journal =	{Dagstuhl Reports},
  ISSN =	{2192-5283},
  year =	{2015},
  volume =	{5},
  number =	{1},
  editor =	{Philippsen, Michael and Felber, Pascal and Scott, Michael L. and Moss, J. Eliot B.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DagRep.5.1.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-50105},
  doi =		{10.4230/DagRep.5.1.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: Multi-/many-core processors, Concurrent Programming, Synchronization, Transactional Memory, Programming Languages, Compilation}
}

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Documents authored by Moss, J. Eliot B.

Mechanizing Soundness of Off-Policy Evaluation

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Concurrent Computing in the Many-core Era (Dagstuhl Seminar 15021)

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