MLP, gaussian processes and negative correlation learning for time series prediction

Time series forecasting is a challenging problem, that has a wide variety of application domains such as in engineering, environment, finance and others. When confronted with a time series forecasting application, typically a number of different forecasting models are tested and the best one is considered. Alternatively, instead of choosing the single best method, a wiser action could be to choose a group of the best models and then to combine their forecasts. In this study we propose a combined model consisting of Multi-layer perceptron (MLP), Gaussian Processes Regression (GPR) and a Negative Correlation Learning (NCL) model. The MLP and the GPR were the top performers in a previous large scale comparative study. On the other hand, NCL suggests an alternative way for building accurate and diverse ensembles. No studies have reported on the performance of the NCL in time series prediction. In this work we test the efficiency of NCL in predicting time series data. Results on two real data sets show that the NCL is a good candidate model for forecasting time series. In addition, the study also shows that the combined MLP/GPR/NCL model outperforms all models under consideration. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.