Sutton & Barto: Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction

Descriptions

• Source: Richard Sutton, Andrew Barto (University of Alberta)
• Prerequisites: ML basics, probability, calculus
• Difficulty: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
• Class Hour: 80+

Sutton & Barto's RL: An Introduction is the "bible" of RL. Richard Sutton is known as the "father of reinforcement learning".

Resources

• Website: incompleteideas.net
• Free online reading
• Code: GitHub

Content

• Part 1: Tabular Methods (Bandits, MDP, DP, MC, TD)
• Part 2: Approximate Methods (Function Approximation, Policy Gradient)
• Part 3: Frontiers (Exploration, Multi-Agent RL)

Tips

Read after David Silver. The book is theory-heavy; build intuition first.

Notes

Essential reading for RL researchers. Required for deep theoretical understanding of RL.