Hidden Markov Models (6)

I've written a Python script to make an HMM for the "occasionally dishonest casino." There is nothing remarkable about the code. Here is a link.

It uses the MarkovHelper module from here, modified a bit. Because long chains yield very low likelihoods, there is a function to convert the probabilities to logs:

def logs(self): def log2(x): return log(x)/log(2) fL = [log2(n) for n in self.fairProb] lL = [log2(n) for n in self.loadProb] D = dict() for k in self.tranProb: D[k] = log2(self.tranProb[k]) return fL, lL, D

There are two points where you can make edits to get more verbose output. Here is an example of output from a model with both transition probabilities set to 0.2. The top line in each group is the sequence of states, then the observed data, followed by the results from the Viterbi algorithm.

fraction correct: 0.6692 0 .. 50 LLFFFFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLFFFFLFLLFLLLLLF 65466142352514466666314623515236466525163311362664 LLLLLFFFFFFFFFFLLLLLFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLFFFFFFFFFFLLLLF 50 .. 100 LLLLLLLLLFFFFFFFLLLLFFLLFFFLLLLFFFFLLFFFFLLLLLFFFF 43264622635463146366241654162162245146442626631643 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLLLLLL 100 .. 150 LLLLLLFFLLLLFFFLLLFFFFFFLLLFLLLFFFLLLLFFFLLLLLLLLF 63421525664134456562136112561166465362562126526622 LFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL 150 .. 200 LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLFLLLLLLFLLLLLLLFFFFFFFFFFFFLLLLFFF 66632561666263461461635121666361266546114312626611 LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLFFFFFLLLLLLLLLLLLFFFFFFLLLLLL

At first, this looks promising. But remember, we tell the model what all the probabilities are. So, knowing that both states are equally likely, random guessing would give 50% correct. For transition probabilities of 0.2 and 0.1, the HMM scores 0.72, 6 points higher than random. With transition probabilities of 0.2 and 0.01, the model score 0.952 correct. At least that is no worse than random!