Dear R-Helpers, I am looking for ways to assess quality of a predictor of variance of a random variable. Here a two related, but yet distinct, setups. 1. I observe y_t, t=1,...,T which is normally distributed with unknown variance v_t (note that the variance is time-dependent). I have two "predictors" for v_t, dubbed v1_t and v2_t, and I want to tell which predictor is better. Here better is to be defined, but intuitively it is thought to be analogous to R^2 of an ordinary regression. I was thinking along the lines of fitting a GLM of the form log(abs(y)) ~ log(v1) with some link function, but couldn't figure out which link function would be appropriate. 2. I observe y_t, t=1,...,T which is multivariate normal iid with unknown covariance matrix C (which is constant here). I have two estimations of C, dubbed C1 and C2, and I want to tell which estimation is better. Here again better is to be defined. I could of course compute the sample covariance matrix of y_t and then the L2 norm of the difference (C1 - sampleC), but I don't know if this is a meaningful measure of a distance between two covariance matrices. Any lead will be highly appreciated. Thanks, Vadim -------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER\ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intende... {{dropped}}