English

Algorithmic identification of probabilities is hard

Logic 2018-10-18 v4

Abstract

Suppose that we are given an infinite binary sequence which is random for a Bernoulli measure of parameter pp. By the law of large numbers, the frequency of zeros in the sequence tends to~pp, and thus we can get better and better approximations of pp as we read the sequence. We study in this paper a similar question, but from the viewpoint of inductive inference. We suppose now that pp is a computable real, but one asks for more: as we are reading more and more bits of our random sequence, we have to eventually guess the exact parameter pp (in the form of a Turing code). Can one do such a thing uniformly on all sequences that are random for computable Bernoulli measures, or even on a `large enough' fraction of them? In this paper, we give a negative answer to this question. In fact, we prove a very general negative result which extends far beyond the class of Bernoulli measures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.5139,
  title  = {Algorithmic identification of probabilities is hard},
  author = {Laurent Bienvenu and Santiago Figueira and Benoit Monin and Alexander Shen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.5139},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:19:06.940Z