TY - JOUR
T1 - Insuring against loss of evidence in game-theoretic probability
AU - Dawid, A. Philip
AU - de Rooij, Steven
AU - Shafer, Glenn
AU - Shen, Alexander
AU - Vereshchagin, Nikolai
AU - Vovk, Vladimir
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Peter Grünwald for inspiring part of this work. Comments by a referee were very helpful; in particular, they led to the addition of Section 4 and expansion of Section 1 . We are grateful to the participants of the discussion of our work on Alexei Savvateev’s blog ( savvateev.livejournal.com/66517.html ). This research has been supported in part by ANR grant NAFIT ANR-08-EMER-008-01 and EPSRC grant EP/F002998/1 .
PY - 2011/1
Y1 - 2011/1
N2 - Statistical testing can be framed as a repetitive game between two players, Forecaster and Sceptic. In each round, Forecaster sets prices for various gambles, and Sceptic chooses which gambles to make. If Sceptic multiplies by a large factor the capital he puts at risk, he has evidence against Forecaster's ability. His capital at the end of each round is a measure of his evidence against Forecaster so far. This can go up and then back down. If you report the maximum so far instead of the current value, you are exaggerating the evidence against Forecaster. In this article, we show how to remove the exaggeration. Removing it means systematically reducing the maximum in such a way that a rival to Sceptic can always play so as to obtain current evidence as good as Sceptic's reduced maximum. We characterize the functions that can achieve such reductions. Because these functions may impose only modest reductions, we think of our result as a method of insuring against loss of evidence. In the context of an actual market, it is a method of insuring against the loss of what an investor has gained so far.
AB - Statistical testing can be framed as a repetitive game between two players, Forecaster and Sceptic. In each round, Forecaster sets prices for various gambles, and Sceptic chooses which gambles to make. If Sceptic multiplies by a large factor the capital he puts at risk, he has evidence against Forecaster's ability. His capital at the end of each round is a measure of his evidence against Forecaster so far. This can go up and then back down. If you report the maximum so far instead of the current value, you are exaggerating the evidence against Forecaster. In this article, we show how to remove the exaggeration. Removing it means systematically reducing the maximum in such a way that a rival to Sceptic can always play so as to obtain current evidence as good as Sceptic's reduced maximum. We characterize the functions that can achieve such reductions. Because these functions may impose only modest reductions, we think of our result as a method of insuring against loss of evidence. In the context of an actual market, it is a method of insuring against the loss of what an investor has gained so far.
KW - Evidence
KW - Game-theoretic probability
KW - Martingales
KW - Mathematical finance
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U2 - 10.1016/j.spl.2010.10.013
DO - 10.1016/j.spl.2010.10.013
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:78549231556
SN - 0167-7152
VL - 81
SP - 157
EP - 162
JO - Statistics and Probability Letters
JF - Statistics and Probability Letters
IS - 1
ER -