An individual is asked to assess a real-valued variable y based on certain characteristics x = (x1,..., xm), and on a database consisting of n observations of (x1,..., xm, y). A possible approach to combine past observations of x and y with the current values of x to generate an assessment of y is similarity-weighted averaging. It suggests that the predicted value of y, yn+1s, be the weighted average of all previously observed values yi, where the weight of yi is the similarity between the vector xn+11,..., xn+1m, associated with yn+1, and the previously observed vector, xi1,..., xim. This paper axiomatizes, in terms of the prediction yn+1, a similarity function that is a (decreasing) exponential in a norm of the difference between the two vectors compared.
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Volume (Year): 55 (2008) Issue (Month): 2 (March) Pages: 107-115 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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