Continuous and randomized defensive forecasting: unified view

Defensive forecasting is a method of transforming laws of probability (stated in game-theoretic terms as strategies for Sceptic) into forecasting algorithms. There are two known varieties of defensive forecasting: "continuous", in which Sceptic's moves are assumed to depend on the forecasts in a (semi)continuous manner and which produces deterministic forecasts, and "randomized", in which the dependence of Sceptic's moves on the forecasts is arbitrary and Forecaster's moves are allowed to be randomized. This note shows that the randomized variety can be obtained from the continuous variety by smearing Sceptic's moves to make them continuous.Comment: 10 pages. The new version: (1) relaxes the assumption that the outcome space is finite, and now it is only assumed to be compact; (2) shows that in the case where the outcome space is finite of cardinality C, the randomized forecasts can be chosen concentrated on a finite set of cardinality at most

Competitive on-line learning with a convex loss function

We consider the problem of sequential decision making under uncertainty in which the loss caused by a decision depends on the following binary observation. In competitive on-line learning, the goal is to design decision algorithms that are almost as good as the best decision rules in a wide benchmark class, without making any assumptions about the way the observations are generated. However, standard algorithms in this area can only deal with finite-dimensional (often countable) benchmark classes. In this paper we give similar results for decision rules ranging over an arbitrary reproducing kernel Hilbert space. For example, it is shown that for a wide class of loss functions (including the standard square, absolute, and log loss functions) the average loss of the master algorithm, over the first $N$ observations, does not exceed the average loss of the best decision rule with a bounded norm plus $O(N^{-1/2})$. Our proof technique is very different from the standard ones and is based on recent results about defensive forecasting. Given the probabilities produced by a defensive forecasting algorithm, which are known to be well calibrated and to have good resolution in the long run, we use the expected loss minimization principle to find a suitable decision.Comment: 26 page

On a simple strategy weakly forcing the strong law of large numbers in the bounded forecasting game

In the framework of the game-theoretic probability of Shafer and Vovk (2001) it is of basic importance to construct an explicit strategy weakly forcing the strong law of large numbers (SLLN) in the bounded forecasting game. We present a simple finite-memory strategy based on the past average of Reality's moves, which weakly forces the strong law of large numbers with the convergence rate of $O(\sqrt{\log n/n})$. Our proof is very simple compared to a corresponding measure-theoretic result of Azuma (1967) on bounded martingale differences and this illustrates effectiveness of game-theoretic approach. We also discuss one-sided protocols and extension of results to linear protocols in general dimension.Comment: 14 page

Hoeffding's inequality in game-theoretic probability

This note makes the obvious observation that Hoeffding's original proof of his inequality remains valid in the game-theoretic framework. All details are spelled out for the convenience of future reference.Comment: 5 page

Defensive forecasting for optimal prediction with expert advice

The method of defensive forecasting is applied to the problem of prediction with expert advice for binary outcomes. It turns out that defensive forecasting is not only competitive with the Aggregating Algorithm but also handles the case of "second-guessing" experts, whose advice depends on the learner's prediction; this paper assumes that the dependence on the learner's prediction is continuous.Comment: 14 page

Defensive online portfolio selection

The class of defensive online portfolio selection algorithms,designed for fi nite investment horizon, is introduced. The Game Constantly Rebalanced Portfolio and the Worst Case Game Constantly Rebalanced Portfolio, are presented and theoretically analyzed. The analysis exploits the rich set of mathematical tools available by means of the connection between Universal Portfolios and the Game- Theoretic framework. The empirical performance of the Worst Case Game Constantly Rebalanced Portfolio algorithm is analyzed through numerical experiments concerning the FTSE 100, Nikkei 225, Nasdaq 100 and S&P500 stock markets for the time interval, from January 2007 to December 2009, which includes the credit crunch crisis from September 2008 to March 2009. The results emphasize the relevance of the proposed online investment algorithm which signi fi cantly outperformed the market index and the minimum variance Sharpe-Markowitz’s portfolio.on-line portfolio selection; universal portfolio; defensive strategy

Implications of contrarian and one-sided strategies for the fair-coin game

We derive some results on contrarian and one-sided strategies by Skeptic for the fair-coin game in the framework of the game-theoretic probability of Shafer and Vovk \cite{sv}. In particular, concerning the rate of convergence of the strong law of large numbers (SLLN), we prove that Skeptic can force that the convergence has to be slower than or equal to $O(n^{-1/2})$. This is achieved by a very simple contrarian strategy of Skeptic. This type of result, bounding the rate of convergence from below, contrasts with more standard results of bounding the rate of SLLN from above by using momentum strategies. We also derive a corresponding one-sided result

A betting interpretation for probabilities and Dempster-Shafer degrees of belief

There are at least two ways to interpret numerical degrees of belief in terms of betting: (1) you can offer to bet at the odds defined by the degrees of belief, or (2) you can judge that a strategy for taking advantage of such betting offers will not multiply the capital it risks by a large factor. Both interpretations can be applied to ordinary additive probabilities and used to justify updating by conditioning. Only the second can be applied to Dempster-Shafer degrees of belief and used to justify Dempster's rule of combination.Comment: 20 page