Reconstructing differential equation from a time series

This paper treats a problem of reconstructing ordinary differential equation from a single analytic time series with observational noise. We suppose that the noise is Gaussian (white). The investigation is presented in terms of classical theory of dynamical systems and modern time series analysis. We restrict our considerations on time series obtained as a numerical analytic solution of autonomous ordinary differential equation, solved with respect to the highest derivative and with polynomial right-hand side. In case of an approximate numerical solution with a rather small error, we propose a geometrical basis and a mathematical algorithm to reconstruct a low-order and low-power polynomial differential equation. To reduce the noise the given time series is smoothed at every point by moving polynomial averages using the least-squares method. Then a specific form of the least-squares method is applied to reconstruct the polynomial right-hand side of the unknown equation. We demonstrate for monotonous, periodic and chaotic solutions that this technique is very efficient.