On Probability Estimation via Relative Frequencies and Discount

Abstract: Probability estimation is an elementary building block of every statistical data compression algorithm. In practice probability estimation is often based on relative letter frequencies which get scaled down, when their sum is too large. Such algorithms are attractive in terms of memory requirements, running time and practical performance. However, there still is a lack of theoretical understanding. In this work we formulate a typical probability estimation algorithm based on relative frequencies and frequency discount, Algorithm RFD. Our main contribution is its theoretical analysis. We show that the code length it requires above an arbitrary piecewise stationary model with bounded and unbounded letter probabilities is small. This theoretically confirms the recency effect of periodic frequency discount, which has often been observed empirically.