A UNIVERSAL FINITE MEMORY SOURCE

In this paper an irreducible parameterization for a finite memory sour ce is constructed in the form of a tree machine. A universal informati on source for the set of finite memory sources is constructed by a pre dictive modification of an earlier-studied algorithm-Context. It is sh own that this universal source incorporates any minimal data-generatin g tree machine in an asymptotically optimal manner in the following se nse: the negative logarithm of the probability it assigns to any long typical sequence, generated by any tree machine, approaches that assig ned by the tree machine at the best possible rate.