Papers › Kernel Metric Learning for In-Sample Off-Policy Evaluation of Deterministic RL Policies

Kernel Metric Learning for In-Sample Off-Policy Evaluation of Deterministic RL Policies

29 May 2024arXiv:2405.18792archive 2025-07-28

Haanvid Lee, Tri Wahyu Guntara, Jongmin Lee, Yung-Kyun Noh, Kee-Eung Kim

We consider off-policy evaluation (OPE) of deterministic target policies for reinforcement learning (RL) in environments with continuous action spaces. While it is common to use importance sampling for OPE, it suffers from high variance when the behavior policy deviates significantly from the target policy. In order to address this issue, some recent works on OPE proposed in-sample learning with importance resampling. Yet, these approaches are not applicable to deterministic target policies for continuous action spaces. To address this limitation, we propose to relax the deterministic target policy using a kernel and learn the kernel metrics that minimize the overall mean squared error of the estimated temporal difference update vector of an action value function, where the action value function is used for policy evaluation. We derive the bias and variance of the estimation error due to this relaxation and provide analytic solutions for the optimal kernel metric. In empirical studies using various test domains, we show that the OPE with in-sample learning using the kernel with optimized metric achieves significantly improved accuracy than other baselines.

PaperPDFCodeCode Syntology ran

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="2405.18792")

Code

Syntology Ran 5 of 8 code samples harvested from 1 repository linked to this paper; 3 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 3 ran · fixture could not drive it; 2 ran with no contract checked.

By repository: official repository: 7 samples from 1 repository, 5 ran; 1 identical to code first harvested elsewhere. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

haanvid/kmifqe officialmentioned in paperpytorch report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

8 samples harvested; 5 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 3 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

3ran · fixture could not drive it
2ran
3unverified

Licence: 1 of the 8 samples is pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from haanvid/kmifqe. Some samples are identical code Syntology first harvested from another repository; for those, this paper's copy is not located and its licence is not recorded. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

Critic haanvid/kmifqe/KMIFQE.py official repository ran MIT (permissive) · a858007a9d9624d1 · report
KMIFQE haanvid/kmifqe/KMIFQE.py official repository ran MIT (permissive) · 36bb0207b41230a8 · report
gaussian_kernel haanvid/kmifqe/KMIFQE.py official repository ran · fixture could not drive it fingerprinted MIT (permissive) · 375fe0e2f099808a · report
gaussian_kernel_dim_wise haanvid/kmifqe/KMIFQE.py official repository ran · fixture could not drive it fingerprinted MIT (permissive) · 2b23095354e40d12 · report
sample_action haanvid/kmifqe/save_replay_buffer.py official repository ran · fixture could not drive it MIT (permissive) · 1426432b272b7c1e · report
get_critic_grad_param haanvid/kmifqe/KMIFQE.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 7577a78af6c2977c · report
get_critic_hess_action haanvid/kmifqe/KMIFQE.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · a3cf70458ecdb484 · report
boolean identical code first harvested elsewhere unverified licence of this copy not recorded · 3b81875ee24223a6 · report

Tasks

Metric LearningOff-policy evaluationReinforcement Learning (RL)

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections