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Poster

An Alternative to Variance: Gini Deviation for Risk-averse Policy Gradient

Yudong Luo · Guiliang Liu · Pascal Poupart · Yangchen Pan

Great Hall & Hall B1+B2 (level 1) #1421
[ ]
[ Paper [ Poster [ OpenReview
Tue 12 Dec 3:15 p.m. PST — 5:15 p.m. PST

Abstract:

Restricting the variance of a policy’s return is a popular choice in risk-averse Reinforcement Learning (RL) due to its clear mathematical definition and easy interpretability. Traditional methods directly restrict the total return variance. Recent methods restrict the per-step reward variance as a proxy. We thoroughly examine the limitations of these variance-based methods, such as sensitivity to numerical scale and hindering of policy learning, and propose to use an alternative risk measure, Gini deviation, as a substitute. We study various properties of this new risk measure and derive a policy gradient algorithm to minimize it. Empirical evaluation in domains where risk-aversion can be clearly defined, shows that our algorithm can mitigate the limitations of variance-based risk measures and achieves high return with low risk in terms of variance and Gini deviation when others fail to learn a reasonable policy.

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