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Statistics 2015
Predicting the outcomes of every process for which an asymptotically accurate stationary predictor exists is impossibleAbstract: The problem of prediction consists in forecasting the conditional distribution of the next outcome given the past. Assume that the source generating the data is such that there is a stationary ergodic predictor whose error converges to zero (in a certain sense). The question is whether there is a universal predictor for all such sources, that is, a predictor whose error goes to zero if any of the sources that have this property is chosen to generate the data. This question is answered in the negative, contrasting a number of previously established positive results concerning related but smaller sets of processes.
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