PROPERTIES OF A MEASURE OF PREDICTIVE SUCCESS

Area theories for the prediction of experimental results delineate regions of predicted outcomes within the set of all possible outcomes. The difference measure of predictive success for area theories introduced by Selten and Krischker (1983) is the difference between hit rate and area. The hit rate is the relative frequency of successful predictions and the area is the relative size of the predicted region within the set of all possible outcomes. It is argued that other measures proposed in the literature are unreasonable with respect to the implied structure of unimprovable theories. Two axiom systems for measures based on hit rate and area characterize the difference measure. The first characterization is ordinal and the second one is cardinal.