Reinforcement learning

RL is the third camp and lies somewhere in between full supervision and a complete lack of predefined labels. On the one hand, it uses many well-established methods of supervised learning, such as deep neural networks for function approximation, stochastic gradient descent, and backpropagation, to learn data representation. On the other hand, it usually applies them in a different way.

In the next two sections of the chapter, we will explore specific details of the RL approach, including assumptions and abstractions in its strict mathematical form. For now, to compare RL with supervised and unsupervised learning, we will take a less formal, but more easily understood, path.

Imagine that you have an agent that needs to take actions in some environment. (Both "agent" and "environment" will be defined in detail later in this chapter.) A robot mouse in a maze is a good example, but you can also imagine an automatic helicopter trying to perform...