Prediction of hierarchical time series using structured regularization and its application to artificial neural networks

PLoS One. 2020 Nov 12;15(11):e0242099. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242099. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

This paper discusses the prediction of hierarchical time series, where each upper-level time series is calculated by summing appropriate lower-level time series. Forecasts for such hierarchical time series should be coherent, meaning that the forecast for an upper-level time series equals the sum of forecasts for corresponding lower-level time series. Previous methods for making coherent forecasts consist of two phases: first computing base (incoherent) forecasts and then reconciling those forecasts based on their inherent hierarchical structure. To improve time series predictions, we propose a structured regularization method for completing both phases simultaneously. The proposed method is based on a prediction model for bottom-level time series and uses a structured regularization term to incorporate upper-level forecasts into the prediction model. We also develop a backpropagation algorithm specialized for applying our method to artificial neural networks for time series prediction. Experimental results using synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that our method is comparable in terms of prediction accuracy and computational efficiency to other methods for time series prediction.

MeSH terms

  • Forecasting / methods
  • Neural Networks, Computer*
  • Time

Grants and funding

One of the authors, Ken Kobayashi (KK) is employed by Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. The founder provided support in the form of salaries for KK, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis.