Reinforcement Learning

By Prof. Balaraman Ravindran | IIT Madras

Learners enrolled: 2208

Reinforcement learning is a paradigm that aims to model the trial-and-error learning process that is needed in many problem situations where explicit instructive signals are not available. It has roots in operations research, behavioral psychology and AI. The goal of the course is to introduce the basic mathematical foundations of reinforcement learning, as well as highlight some of the recent directions of research.

INTENDED AUDIENCE Any interested learner

INDUSTRY SUPPORT Data analytics/data science/robotics

Summary

Course Status :	Completed
Course Type :	Elective
Language for course content :	English
Duration :	12 weeks
Category :	Computer Science and Engineering
Credit Points :	3
Level :	Undergraduate
Start Date :	29 Jul 2019
End Date :	18 Oct 2019
Exam Date :	16 Nov 2019 IST

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week 1 Introduction

Week 2 Bandit algorithms – UCB, PAC

Week 3 Bandit algorithms –Median Elimination, Policy Gradient

Week 4 Full RL & MDPs

Week 5 Bellman Optimality

Week 6 Dynamic Programming & TD Methods

Week 7 Eligibility Traces

Week 8 Function Approximation

Week 9 Least Squares Methods

Week 10 Fitted Q, DQN & Policy Gradient for Full RL

Week 11 Hierarchical RL

Week 12 POMDPs

Books and references

R. S. Sutton and A. G. Barto. Reinforcement Learning - An Introduction. MIT Press. 1998.

Instructor bio

Prof. Balaraman Ravindran is currently a Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science at IIT Madras. He has nearly two decades of research experience in machine learning and specifically reinforcement learning. Currently his research interests are centered on learning from and through interactions and span the areas of data mining, social network analysis and reinforcement learning.

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.
The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).
Date and Time of Exams: 16 November 2019, Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.
Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.
The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.
Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 8 assignments out of the total 12 assignments given in the course.
Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100
Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75.

If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.
Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Madras. It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.
Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies are being discontinued from July 2019 semester and will not be dispatched

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