{"url":"/method/prioritized-sweeping","slug":"prioritized-sweeping","name":"Prioritized Sweeping","full_name":"Prioritized Sweeping","full_name_withheld":false,"description_markdown":"**Prioritized Sweeping** is a reinforcement learning technique for model-based algorithms that prioritizes updates according to a measure of urgency, and performs these updates first. A queue is maintained of every state-action pair whose estimated value would change nontrivially if updated, prioritized by the size of the change. When the top pair in the queue is updated, the effect on each of its predecessor pairs is computed. If the effect is greater than some threshold, then the pair is inserted in the queue with the new priority.\r\n\r\nSource: Sutton and Barto, Reinforcement Learning, 2nd Edition","description_state":"present","introduced_year":null,"introduced_by":{"title":null,"paper":null,"first_author":null,"n_authors":0,"url_abs":null,"archive_paper_url":null},"source":{"url":null,"title":null,"url_on_a_paper_host":false},"code_snippet_url":null,"code_snippet_url_on_a_code_host":false,"categories":[{"area":"Reinforcement Learning","area_id":"reinforcement-learning","collection":"Efficient Planning","url":"/methods/category/efficient-planning","pwc_aliases":[]}],"n_papers_tagged":6,"archive_num_papers":6,"papers_newest_first":[{"paper":null,"title":"Investigating the Interplay of Prioritized Replay and Generalization","date":"2024-07-12","arxiv_id":"2407.09702","n_code_links":0,"syntology":null},{"paper":null,"title":"Model-based Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Cooperative Prioritized Sweeping","date":"2020-01-15","arxiv_id":"2001.07527","n_code_links":0,"syntology":null},{"paper":null,"title":"Reachability and Differential based Heuristics for Solving Markov Decision Processes","date":"2019-01-03","arxiv_id":"1901.00921","n_code_links":0,"syntology":null},{"paper":null,"title":"Prioritized Sweeping Neural DynaQ with Multiple Predecessors, and Hippocampal Replays","date":"2018-02-15","arxiv_id":"1802.05594","n_code_links":0,"syntology":null},{"paper":"/paper/efficient-model-based-deep-reinforcement","title":"Efficient Model-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning with Variational State Tabulation","date":"2018-02-12","arxiv_id":"1802.04325","n_code_links":1,"syntology":null},{"paper":"/paper/is-prioritized-sweeping-the-better-episodic","title":"Is prioritized sweeping the better episodic control?","date":"2017-11-20","arxiv_id":"1711.06677","n_code_links":1,"syntology":null}],"papers_shown":6,"tasks":[{"task":"/task/reinforcement-learning","name":"Reinforcement Learning","papers":4},{"task":"/task/reinforcement-learning-1","name":"Reinforcement Learning (RL)","papers":3},{"task":"/task/reinforcement-learning-2","name":"reinforcement-learning","papers":3},{"task":"/task/q-learning","name":"Q-Learning","papers":2},{"task":"/task/deep-reinforcement-learning","name":"Deep Reinforcement Learning","papers":1},{"task":null,"name":"Hippocampus","papers":1},{"task":"/task/model-based-reinforcement-learning","name":"Model-based Reinforcement Learning","papers":1},{"task":"/task/multi-agent-reinforcement-learning","name":"Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning","papers":1}],"tasks_shown":8,"n_tasks":8,"usage_by_year":[{"year":"2017","papers":1},{"year":"2018","papers":2},{"year":"2019","papers":1},{"year":"2020","papers":1},{"year":"2024","papers":1}],"row_source":"methods_table","archive":{"source":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","archive_url":"https://paperswithcode.com/method/prioritized-sweeping"},"syntology_read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00"}