A Cardinal Comparison of Experts

Itay Kavaler, Rann Smorodinsky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

In various situations, decision makers face experts that may provide conflicting advice. This advice may be in the form of probabilistic forecasts over critical future events. We consider a setting where the two forecasters provide their advice repeatedly and ask whether the decision maker can learn to compare and rank the two forecasters based on past performance. We take an axiomatic approach and propose three natural axioms that a comparison test should comply with. We propose a test that complies with our axioms. Perhaps, not surprisingly, this test is closely related to the likelihood ratio of the two forecasts over the realized sequence of events. More surprisingly, this test is essentially unique. Furthermore, using results on the rate of convergence of supermartingales, we show that whenever the two experts’ advice are sufficiently distinct, the proposed test will detect the informed expert in any desired degree of precision in some fixed finite time.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationWeb and Internet Economics - 16th International Conference, WINE 2020, Proceedings
EditorsXujin Chen, Nikolai Gravin, Martin Hoefer, Ruta Mehta
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages416-429
Number of pages14
ISBN (Print)9783030649456
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020
Event16th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics, WINE 2020 - Beijing, China
Duration: 7 Dec 202011 Dec 2020

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume12495 LNCS

Conference

Conference16th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics, WINE 2020
Country/TerritoryChina
CityBeijing
Period7/12/2011/12/20

Keywords

  • Forecasting
  • Probability
  • Testing

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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