Offline to Online Conversion

Abstract

We consider the problem of converting offline estimators into an online predictor or estimator with small extra regret. Formally this is the problem of merging a collection of probability measures over strings of length 1,2,3,... into a single probability measure over infinite sequences. We describe various approaches and their pros and cons on various examples. As a side-result we give an elementary non-heuristic purely combinatoric derivation of Turing's famous estimator. Our main technical contribution is to determine the computational complexity of online estimators with good guarantees in general.