000 01739 a2200217 4500
003 OSt
020 _a9781119815037
040 _cIIT Kanpur
041 _aeng
082 _a006.3
_bP871r
100 _aPowell, Warren B.
245 _aReinforcement learning and stochastic optimization
_ba unified framework for sequential decisions
_cWarren B. Powell
260 _bJohn Wiley
_c2022
_aHoboken
300 _axxxiv, 1099p
520 _a"The first step in sequential decision problems is to understand what decisions are being made. It is surprising how often it is that people faced with complex problems, which spans scientists in a lab to people trying to solve major health problems, are not able to identify the decisions they face. We then want to find a method for making decisions. There are at least 45 words in the English language that are equivalent to "method for making a decision," but the one we have settled on is policy. The term policy is very familiar to fields such as Markov decision processes and reinforcement learning, but with a much narrower interpretation than we will use. Other fields do not use the term at all. Designing effective policies will be the focus of most of this book. Even more subtle is identifying the different sources of uncertainty. It can be hard enough trying to identify potential decisions, but thinking about all the random events that might affect whatever it is that you are managing, whether it is reducing disease, managing inventories, or making investments, can seem like a hopeless challenge"
650 _aReinforcement learning
650 _aDecision making -- Statistical methods
650 _aMathematical optimization
650 _aStochastic analysis
942 _cBK
999 _c567473
_d567473