Compatible Weighted Proper Scoring Rules

Abstract

Many proper scoring rules such as the Brier and log scoring rules implicitly reward a probability forecaster relative to a uniform baseline distribution. Recent work has motivated weighted proper scoring rules, which have an additional baseline parameter. To date two families of weighted proper scoring rules have been introduced, the weighted power and pseudospherical scoring families. These families are compatible with the log scoring rule: when the baseline maximizes the log scoring rule over some set of distributions, the baseline also maximizes the weighted power and pseudospherical scoring rules over the same set. We characterize all weighted proper scoring families and prove a general property: every proper scoring rule is compatible with some weighted scoring family, and every weighted scoring family is compatible with some proper scoring rule.