  We are studying long term sequence prediction (forecasting). We approach this
by investigating criteria for choosing a compact useful state representation.
The state is supposed to summarize useful information from the history. We want
a method that is asymptotically consistent in the sense it will provably
eventually only choose between alternatives that satisfy an optimality property
related to the used criterion. We extend our work to the case where there is
side information that one can take advantage of and, furthermore, we briefly
discuss the active setting where an agent takes actions to achieve desirable
outcomes.
