Papers › Rainbow: Combining Improvements in Deep Reinforcement Learning
Rainbow: Combining Improvements in Deep Reinforcement Learning
Matteo Hessel, Joseph Modayil, Hado van Hasselt, Tom Schaul, Georg Ostrovski, Will Dabney, Dan Horgan, Bilal Piot, Mohammad Azar, David Silver
The deep reinforcement learning community has made several independent improvements to the DQN algorithm. However, it is unclear which of these extensions are complementary and can be fruitfully combined. This paper examines six extensions to the DQN algorithm and empirically studies their combination. Our experiments show that the combination provides state-of-the-art performance on the Atari 2600 benchmark, both in terms of data efficiency and final performance. We also provide results from a detailed ablation study that shows the contribution of each component to overall performance.
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="1710.02298")
Code
Syntology Ran 2 of 6 code samples harvested from 3 repositories linked to this paper; 4 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 1 ran · honoured contract; 1 ran · violated contract.
By repository: community (archive-listed): 5 samples from 3 repositories, 1 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.
34 repositories listed; official and paper-mentioned ones first.
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
6 samples harvested; 2 ran; 1 honoured the contract we drafted; 4 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.
Licence: 1 of the 6 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 3 repositories linked to this paper, official or community; each sample names its own and says which. 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.
3f5569362eb33902 · report
46e2342857dcaedf · report
bc2c6bd2e337d077 · report
787e35131a9851ea · report
34182f569fae27fe · report
4c60d8998b722013 · report
Tasks
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
| Task | Dataset | Model | Metric | Value | Rank at snapshot | Leaderboard | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atari Games | Atari 2600 Ms. Pacman | Rainbow | Score | 2570.2 | #31 of 47 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| Atari Games | Atari 2600 Space Invaders | Rainbow | Score | 12629.0 | #17 of 55 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| Atari Games | Atari games | Rainbow DQN | Mean Human Normalized Score | 873.97% | #10 of 12 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| Atari Games | Atari-57 | Rainbow DQN | Human World Record Breakthrough | 4 | #9 of 11 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| Atari Games | Atari-57 | Rainbow DQN | Mean Human Normalized Score | 873.97% | #9 of 11 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| Atari Games | atari game | Rainbow | Human World Record Breakthrough | 4 | #9 of 9 | Archive leaderboard | report |
| Montezuma's Revenge | Atari 2600 Montezuma's Revenge | Rainbow | Average Return (NoOp) | 384 | #3 of 3 | Archive leaderboard | report |
Ranks are positions in the archive's leaderboards as they stood at the 2025-07-28 snapshot. Results published since then are not among these rows, so a rank here is not a current standing.
Methods
Introduced by this paper: Rainbow DQN
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