Qihang/Add Blog: Why the Exponential? From Max‑Entropy RL to the Boltzmann Distribution

_posts/2025-10-11-max-ent-rl.md

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+---
+layout: distill
+title:  Why the Exponential? From Max‑Entropy RL to the Boltzmann Distribution
+description: This blog post explores why the exponential function appears ubiquitously across modern RL, energy-based modeling, and statistical mechanics. We examine the connection between max-entropy reinforcement learning and the Boltzmann distribution, uncovering the fundamental principles that make the exponential form inevitable and explaining what "temperature" actually does in these frameworks.
+tags: reinforcement-learning information-theory boltzmann-distribution
+giscus_comments: true
+date: 2025-10-11
+featured: true
+redirect: https://qihang-zhang.com/Learning-Sys-Blog/2025/10/06/max-ent-rl-and-boltzmann-distribution.html
+
+authors:
+  - name: Qihang Zhang
+    url: "https://qihang-zhang.com/"
+    affiliations:
+      name: UBC
+
+---