Confusion with Q learning Episode Definition

Question

After reading some tutorials I am still unsure about the definition of any episode. Is episode defined as one walk through from the start state to an exit/goal state?

Answer 1

That depends on the task/environment. In tasks where there is a well-defined exit/goal state (and possibly also other kinds of terminal states, like failure states), yes, that could be an episode.

Often, there will also be a time limit (e.g. episode will be terminated if a certain amount of time has passed, regardless of success/failure.

Basically, whoever specifies the problem can also choose how to define an episode, it is not always defined in the same way.