Generalized Probability Smoothing

12/06/2017

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by   Christopher Mattern, et al.

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In this work we consider a generalized version of Probability Smoothing, the core elementary model for sequential prediction in the state of the art PAQ family of data compression algorithms. Our main contribution is a code length analysis that considers the redundancy of Probability Smoothing with respect to a Piecewise Stationary Source. The analysis holds for a finite alphabet and expresses redundancy in terms of the total variation in probability mass of the stationary distributions of a Piecewise Stationary Source. By choosing parameters appropriately Probability Smoothing has redundancy O(S·√(T T)) for sequences of length T with respect to a Piecewise Stationary Source with S segments.