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ECE 457CReinforcement Learning

Units
0.50
Faculty
Engineering
Subject
Electrical and Computer Engineering

When it runs

  1. F24
  2. W25
  3. S25
  4. F25
  5. W26
  6. S26
  7. F26
  8. W27
  9. S27

Ran in 2 of the last 7 terms. Winter 2027: scheduled, 2 lecture sections. Spring 2027: schedule not out yet.

Introduction to reinforcement learning (RL) theory and algorithms for learning decision-making policies in situations with uncertainty and limited information. Topics include Markov decision processes, classic exact/approximate RL algorithms such as value/policy iteration, Q-learning, State-action-reward-state-action (SARSA), Temporal Difference (TD) methods, policy gradients, actor-critic, and Deep RL such as Deep Q-Learning (DQN), Asynchronous Advantage Actor Critic (A3C), and Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG).

Prerequisites

  • Must have completed at least 1 of the following:
    • BME213 - Statistics and Experimental Design (0.50)
    • ECE203 - Probability Theory and Statistics 1 (0.50)
    • MSE253 - Probability and Statistics 2 (0.50)
    • MTE201 - Experimental Measurement and Statistical Analysis (0.50)
    • STAT206 - Statistics for Software Engineering (0.50)
    • STAT230 - Probability (0.50)
    • STAT240 - Probability (Advanced Level) (0.50)
    • SYDE212 - Probability, Statistics, and Data Science (0.50)

Antirequisites

  • Complete all of the following
    • Not completed nor concurrently enrolled in any of the following:
      • ECE493 - Special Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering (0.50)
    • Not completed nor concurrently enrolled in:

Leads to

No course lists it as a requisite.

Winter 2027 sections

Enrolment from UW Open Data, which can trail Quest by up to two days. Instructors and rooms: Schedule of Classes.
SectionClassEnrolledMeets
LEC 00174900 / 140TTh 14:30–15:50
Jan 29 16:00–17:20
Feb 26 16:00–17:20
Mar 19 16:00–17:20
Apr 9 16:00–17:20
LEC 7018180137 / 9999Online or by arrangement
TUT 10174910 / 140M 19:00–19:50

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Reviewed on UW Flow

57% liked it59% easy69% useful

From 14 ratings and 6 comments on UW Flow. The most helpful comments, quoted as written, without names. Read them all on UW Flow.

  • if you're looking to take this for the cs ai specialization, it's a decent choice. in spring 2024 we had 3 assignments, a midterm, and final. first assignment was super easy, just small calculation problems. second assignment was training an rl agent on a gridworld task using a few specific algorithms, but with the skeleton python code they give you it was also super easy and barely any coding was required. then you write a report on your results, if you just write enough bs analysis on it you'll do well. third assignment we had the option of writing up our own algorithm based on one we learned in class for an rl agent, or just doing some analysis on pre-existing algorithms on some tasks,…

    Sep 2024 · liked it · 4 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

  • Course content covers overview of reinforcement learning techniques, starting with multi-armed bandits and ending with newer algorithms such as A3C. I was really excited for this course going into it in S22. I ended the course disappointed. The entire course was just an organization disaster.
    Slides were just directly ripped from other courses/websites, leading to different notation for the same concepts. The professor simply did not seem prepared during lectures and would also often be confused by what a slide was trying to showcase. Often, we were referred to some medium blog that had more details.
    Projects were also a bit of a mess. Involved running various algorithms on some python…

    Nov 2022 · didn’t like it · 3 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

  • Interesting course but the prof was so bad.

    Jul 2025 · liked it · 2 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

  • The material covered was okay. I just didn't like how the course was delivered. The prof kind of mumbled in the lectures which made it impossible to pay attention. The assignments were okay for the most part. The one assignment were we trained 9 RL agents on different environment was rough because hyperparameter tuning and training took like 18 hours each. Granted, it's not 18 hours of work, but 18 hours of waiting for the process to finish, 9 times. Really awful assignment. And the instructions were not clear at all. The remaining assignments were fine: some probability review, train 1 agent (with better instructions), and summarize a modern RL paper. The final was very fair and the…

    Aug 2025 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this

  • Two letters: N and O. You're basically cramming all the materials by yourself. The test was also kind of cooked since a lot of the questions are not free marks (you're basically asked to think more than what's presented on the textbook) which is fine until you realize that for every question you get wrong that's 5/84 which is of high risk.

    Aug 2024 · liked itOn UW FlowRemove this

Discussed on r/uwaterloo

7 posts and comments in 6 threads mention ECE 457C, March 2021 to December 2024. Quoted word for word, newest first; each reply sits under the post and the comment that started its branch. Search r/uwaterloo for newer posts.

Spring 2024

Winter 2024

Interesting ML course from Engineering Department from Math Student 7 points, 8 comments

u/Novel_Brain9700: “… ECE 457C: Reinforcement Learning (Spring) 8. ECE 495: Autonomous Vehicle (Winter) 9. …”

u/suiyui: “… game theory, reinforcement learning, fuzzy logic) that you typically don't see in undergrad ECE 457C and SYDE 575 are supposedly very difficult I highly recommend SYDE 599 (Special topics in Deep Learning) as it's the best of all worlds in terms of scope and scale. …”

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Winter 2023

CE 4A TEs 8 points, 30 comments

u/OkCelery1514: “… 454, Distributed Computing ECE 455, Embedded Software ECE 457A, Co-op & Adaptive Algorithms ECE 457C, Reinforcement Learning ECE 458, Computer Security ECE 481, Digital Control Systems ECE 493, Special Topics: IOT Signal Processing I took ECE 358, ECE 356, & ECE 351 in 3B and …”

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Spring 2022

Winter 2021

Check it elsewhere for Fall 2026

Calendar versions

Undergraduate Calendar