Exponential Hardness of Off-Policy Evaluation under History-Dependent Logging

📅 2026-09-16
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🤖 AI Summary
研究通过构建特定POMDPs,展示了即使数据集频繁访问每个隐藏状态,历史依赖的日志记录方法仍可能对目标策略的价值估计呈指数级无信息量。
📝 Abstract
Can a logged dataset visit every hidden state frequently and still be exponentially uninformative about a target policy's value? We show that it can when the logger depends on history. For every horizon $H \ge 3$, we construct two POMDPs with at most two latent states per stage, three actions, and a common logger with three memory states. Action coverage, belief coverage, and two behavior-marginal outcome-revealing conditions all have constants independent of $H$. Nevertheless, evaluating a known deterministic target policy to accuracy $1/8$ requires $Θ((3/2)^H \log(1/δ))$ logged episodes at confidence $1-δ$, for $0 < δ\le 1/4$, even when both candidate models are known. The mechanism is simple: a reset erases the unknown transition that determines the target value. We characterize the resulting statistical experiment exactly and obtain a matching optimal estimator. A directed two-lane gridworld realizes the construction, and trajectory simulations agree with its finite-sample prediction. The result establishes intractability for the history-dependent-logging, model-based case posed by Zhang and Jiang (2025, arXiv:2503.01134), under their behavior-marginal definition of revealing.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

Off-Policy Evaluation
History-Dependent Logging
POMDP
Exponential Hardness
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

history-dependent logging
off-policy evaluation
exponential hardness
POMDPs
statistical experiment
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