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Computing the Bias of Constant-step Stochastic Approximation with Markovian Noise

We study stochastic approximation algorithms with Markovian noise and constant step-size $\alpha$. We develop a method based on infinitesimal generator comparisons to study the bias of the algorithm, which is the expected difference between $\theta_n$ -- the value at iteration $n$ -- and $\theta^*$ -- the unique equilibrium of the corresponding ODE. We show that, under some smoothness conditions, this bias is of order $O(\alpha)$. Furthermore, we show that the time-averaged bias is equal to $\alpha V + O(\alpha^2)$, where $V$ is a constant characterized by a Lyapunov equation, showing that $\mathbb{E}[\bar{\theta}_n] \approx \theta^*+V\alpha + O(\alpha^2)$, where $\bar{\theta}_n=(1/n)\sum_{k=1}^n\theta_k$ is the Polyak-Ruppert average. We also show that $\bar{\theta}_n$ converges with high probability around $\theta^*+\alpha V$. We illustrate how to combine this with Richardson-Romberg extrapolation to derive an iterative scheme with a bias of order $O(\alpha^2)$.

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