computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

, a predictive state representation (PSR) is a way to model a state of controlled

dynamical system In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a Function (mathematics), function describes the time dependence of a Point (geometry), point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a ...

from a history of actions taken and resulting observations. PSR captures the state of a system as a vector of predictions for future tests (experiments) that can be done on the system. A test is a sequence of action-observation pairs and its prediction is the probability of the test's observation-sequence happening if the test's action-sequence were to be executed on the system. One of the advantage of using PSR is that the predictions are directly related to observable quantities. This is in contrast to other models of dynamical systems, such as

partially observable Markov decision process A partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) is a generalization of a Markov decision process (MDP). A POMDP models an agent decision process in which it is assumed that the system dynamics are determined by an MDP, but the agent cannot ...

es (POMDPs) where the state of the system is represented as a

probability distribution In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon i ...

over unobserved nominal states.

References

* * * Machine learning Dynamical systems {{Compu-AI-stub