arXiv Statistics ML By Pin Ni, Francesca Medda, Ramin Okhrati

When a High Score Is an Illusion: Certifying Genuine versus Repackaged Forecasting Skill

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The paper investigates how reusing observations for ranking forecasts can create artificial associations between forecast and outcome ranks. It develops theoretical conditions that preserve these associations and introduces unbiased kernel and U‑statistic estimators for interaction terms. Empirical results on a Beijing air‑quality archive show that interaction explains over 90% of shared forecast scores, and a matched null experiment demonstrates that distinct references dramatically reduce false rejections.

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