用条件白化提升时间序列概率预测,更好捕捉变量关联与非平稳性。
Conditionally Whitened Generative Models for Probabilistic Time Series Forecasting
- 通过条件白化融合先验均值与协方差信息,改进生成模型分布建模。
- 在五个真实数据集上,新方法显著提升预测性能,尤其在分布漂移下更稳健。
- 适合关注时间序列多变量相关性与动态变化的科研与工业应用者。
多变量时间序列的概率预测面临非平稳性、变量间依赖及分布漂移等挑战。尽管扩散模型和流匹配模型表现良好,但通常忽略如条件均值与协方差等有用先验信息。本文提出条件白化生成模型(CW-Gen),通过条件白化融入先验信息。理论上,我们证明在满足一定条件下,以基于条件均值与协方差估计器的多元正态分布替代传统扩散模型的终端标准多元正态分布,可提升样本质量。据此,我们设计联合均值-协方差估计器(JMCE),同时学习条件均值与滑动窗口协方差。基于此,提出条件白化扩散模型(CW-Diff)并扩展至条件白化流匹配(CW-Flow)。在五个真实世界数据集上,六种先进生成模型的实验表明,CW-Gen持续提升预测性能,更有效捕捉非平稳动态与变量间相关性。实证结果进一步显示,该方法能有效缓解分布漂移影响。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Probabilistic forecasting of multivariate time series is challenging due to non-stationarity, inter-variable dependencies, and distribution shifts. While recent diffusion and flow matching models have shown promise, they often ignore informative priors such as conditional means and covariances. In this work, we propose Conditionally Whitened Generative Models (CW-Gen), a framework that incorporates prior information through conditional whitening. Theoretically, we establish sufficient conditions under which replacing the traditional terminal distribution of diffusion models, namely the standard multivariate normal, with a multivariate normal distribution parameterized by estimators of the conditional mean and covariance improves sample quality. Guided by this analysis, we design a novel Joint Mean-Covariance Estimator (JMCE) that simultaneously learns the conditional mean and sliding-window covariance. Building on JMCE, we introduce Conditionally Whitened Diffusion Models (CW-Diff) and extend them to Conditionally Whitened Flow Matching (CW-Flow). Experiments on five real-world datasets with six state-of-the-art generative models demonstrate that CW-Gen consistently enhances predictive performance, capturing non-stationary dynamics and inter-variable correlations more effectively than prior-free approaches. Empirical results further demonstrate that CW-Gen can effectively mitigate the effects of distribution shift.
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