Module 03Reinforcement LearningTechnical Deep-Dive

Reinforcement Learning: Agent-Environment Alignment & Policy Optimization

Master the concepts driving autonomous decision-making: reward shaping, policy optimization, Bellman updates, and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).


01.The RL Feedback Loop

Reinforcement Learning focuses on training an agent to interact with an environment to maximize cumulative reward. Unlike supervised learning, we do not feed the agent labeled answers; the agent discovers optimal behavior via sequential exploration.

02.Bellman Optimality & Policy Updates

Using the Bellman equation, we model future reward expectations. In this module, we construct custom state matrices and evaluate policy convergence algorithms in simulated grids.

Python Q-Learning Implementation

import numpy as np

class SimpleQLearner:
    def __init__(self, states_count, actions_count, alpha=0.1, gamma=0.9, epsilon=0.1):
        self.q_table = np.zeros((states_count, actions_count))
        self.alpha = alpha       # Learning rate
        self.gamma = gamma       # Discount factor
        self.epsilon = epsilon   # Exploration rate

    def choose_action(self, state):
        if np.random.uniform(0, 1) < self.epsilon:
            return np.random.choice(self.q_table.shape[1])
        else:
            return np.argmax(self.q_table[state, :])

    def learn(self, state, action, reward, next_state):
        predict = self.q_table[state, action]
        target = reward + self.gamma * np.max(self.q_table[next_state, :])
        self.q_table[state, action] += self.alpha * (target - predict)