Markov Decision Process

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What Does Markov Decision Process Mean?

A Markov decision process (MDP) is something that professionals refer to as a “discrete time stochastic control process.” It's based on mathematics pioneered by Russian academic Andrey Markov in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Techopedia Explains Markov Decision Process

One way to explain a Markov decision process and associated Markov chains is that these are elements of modern game theory predicated on simpler mathematical research by the Russian scientist some hundred years ago. The description of a Markov decision process is that it studies a scenario where a system is in some given set of states, and moves forward to another state based on the decisions of a decision maker.

A Markov chain as a model shows a sequence of events where probability of a given event depends on a previously attained state. Professionals may talk about a “countable state space” in describing the Markov decision process – some associate the idea of the Markov decision model with a “random walk” model or other stochastic model based on probabilities (the random walk model, often cited on Wall Street, models the movement of an equity up or down in a market probability context).

In general, Markov decision processes are often applied to some of the most sophisticated technologies that professionals are working on today, for example, in robotics, automation and research models.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.