Reader small image

You're reading from  Hands-On Reinforcement Learning with Python

Product typeBook
Published inJun 2018
Reading LevelIntermediate
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781788836524
Edition1st Edition
Languages
Right arrow
Author (1)
Sudharsan Ravichandiran
Sudharsan Ravichandiran
author image
Sudharsan Ravichandiran

Sudharsan Ravichandiran is a data scientist and artificial intelligence enthusiast. He holds a Bachelors in Information Technology from Anna University. His area of research focuses on practical implementations of deep learning and reinforcement learning including natural language processing and computer vision. He is an open-source contributor and loves answering questions on Stack Overflow.
Read more about Sudharsan Ravichandiran

Right arrow

The Markov chain and Markov process

Before going into MDP, let us understand the Markov chain and Markov process, which form the foundation of MDP.

The Markov property states that the future depends only on the present and not on the past. The Markov chain is a probabilistic model that solely depends on the current state to predict the next state and not the previous states, that is, the future is conditionally independent of the past. The Markov chain strictly follows the Markov property.

For example, if we know that the current state is cloudy, we can predict that next state could be rainy. We came to this conclusion that the next state could be rainy only by considering the current state (cloudy) and not the past states, which might be sunny, windy, and so on. However, the Markov property does not hold true for all processes. For example, throwing a dice (the next state) has...

lock icon
The rest of the page is locked
Previous PageNext Page
You have been reading a chapter from
Hands-On Reinforcement Learning with Python
Published in: Jun 2018Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781788836524

Author (1)

author image
Sudharsan Ravichandiran

Sudharsan Ravichandiran is a data scientist and artificial intelligence enthusiast. He holds a Bachelors in Information Technology from Anna University. His area of research focuses on practical implementations of deep learning and reinforcement learning including natural language processing and computer vision. He is an open-source contributor and loves answering questions on Stack Overflow.
Read more about Sudharsan Ravichandiran