Bilinear Fractal Interpolation and Box Dimension

In the context of general iterated function systems (IFSs), we introduce bilinear fractal interpolants as the fixed points of certain Read-Bajraktarevi\'{c} operators. By exhibiting a generalized "taxi-cab" metric, we show that the graph of a bilinear fractal interpolant is the attractor of an underlying contractive bilinear IFS. We present an explicit formula for the box-counting dimension of the graph of a bilinear fractal interpolant in the case of equally spaced data points

Global Optimization for Value Function Approximation

Existing value function approximation methods have been successfully used in many applications, but they often lack useful a priori error bounds. We propose a new approximate bilinear programming formulation of value function approximation, which employs global optimization. The formulation provides strong a priori guarantees on both robust and expected policy loss by minimizing specific norms of the Bellman residual. Solving a bilinear program optimally is NP-hard, but this is unavoidable because the Bellman-residual minimization itself is NP-hard. We describe and analyze both optimal and approximate algorithms for solving bilinear programs. The analysis shows that this algorithm offers a convergent generalization of approximate policy iteration. We also briefly analyze the behavior of bilinear programming algorithms under incomplete samples. Finally, we demonstrate that the proposed approach can consistently minimize the Bellman residual on simple benchmark problems

Bilinear Discrete Painleve-II and its Particular Solutions

By analogy to the continuous Painlev\'e II equation, we present particular solutions of the discrete Painlev\'e II (d-P$\rm_{II}$) equation. These solutions are of rational and special function (Airy) type. Our analysis is based on the bilinear formalism that allows us to obtain the $\tau$ function for d-P$\rm_{II}$. Two different forms of bilinear d-P$\rm_{II}$ are obtained and we show that they can be related by a simple gauge transformation.Comment: 9 pages in plain Te